Podcasts about amazon logistics

Join us in this enlightening episode of the eCom Ops Podcast with Juan Camilo Meisel, CEO and founder of GRIP Shipping. Dive into the world of e-commerce logistics, uncovering the complexities and the crucial role of data-driven decision-making. Discover how Juan's journey from ButcherBox to founding GRIP Shipping is revolutionizing the way e-commerce handles perishable goods.

Finally, we have an Amazon logistic expert who worked at Amazon doing nothing but figuring out how to move goods faster! Rob Hahn is the COO at Pattern and we are so excited to get all the questions answered.  Always Off Brand is Ecommerce Simplified, Learn & Laugh!    Guest: Rob Hahn LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-hahn-12136736/   Guest Co-Host: Gabriella Neske LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaneske/   MAGIC MIND SPONSORSHIP:  GET up to 45% off on subscription and 20% of first order with CODE: ALWAYSOFFBRAND    FEEDSPOT TOP 5 Retail Podcast! https://podcast.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/?feedid=5770554&_src=f2_featured_email QUICKFIRE Info:   Website: https://www.quickfirenow.com/ Email the Show: info@quickfirenow.com  Talk to us on Social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quickfireproductions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickfire__/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@quickfiremarketing LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/quickfire-productions-llc/about/ Sports podcast Scott has been doing since 2017, Scott & Tim Sports Show part of Somethin About Nothin:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/somethin-about-nothin/id1306950451 HOSTS: Summer Jubelirer has been in digital commerce and marketing for over 17 years. After spending many years working for digital and ecommerce agencies working with multi-million dollar brands and running teams of Account Managers, she is now the Amazon Manager at OLLY PBC.   LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/summerjubelirer/   Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 30 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon. Mr. Ohsman has been managing brands on Amazon for 19yrs. Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC. Producer and Co-Host for the top 5 retail podcast, Always Off Brand. He also produces the Brain Driven Brands Podcast featuring leading Consumer Behaviorist Sarah Levinger. Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-ohsman-861196a6/   Hayley Brucker has been working in retail and with Amazon for years. Hayley has extensive experience in digital advertising, both seller and vendor central on Amazon. Hayley is based out of North Carolina and has worked in multiple product categories and has also worked on the brand side and started with Nordstrom on the retail floor.  LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayley-brucker-1945bb229/   Huge thanks to Cytrus our show theme music “Office Party” available wherever you get your music. Check them out here: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cytrusmusic Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cytrusmusic/ Twitter https://twitter.com/cytrusmusic SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VrNLN6Thj1iUMsiL4Yt5q?si=MeRsjqYfQiafl0f021kHwg APPLE MUSIC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/cytrus/1462321449   “Always Off Brand” is part of the Quickfire Podcast Network and produced by Quickfire LLC.  

Send us a textAmazon promised lower fees, but here's what they didn't mention. The critical partial shipment split option is disappearing, and sellers are left with only two choices.Get our Amazon PPC guide and start improving your ads today https://bit.ly/3DLhywd#AmazonFBA #AmazonSeller #FBAFees #Ecommerce #AmazonUpdatesWatch these videos next:Turn Shoppers Into Repeat Customers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bPOaLvpQvc&list=PLDkvNlz8yl_YEKE1B5o1uhbBm1QQcPzmY&index=6How to Add Cost of Goods for Amazon Reimbursement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrCV57aXwsw&list=PLDkvNlz8yl_YEKE1B5o1uhbBm1QQcPzmY&index=11-----------------------------------------------Struggling with your listing? Let us fix it → http://bit.ly/3B1LvHtNeed expert advice? Book a coaching call now → http://bit.ly/3B3HMJATimestamps00:00 - Amazon's Fee Change News00:07 - Amazon's November Fee Announcement00:26 - The Hidden Catch in Amazon's Fee Reduction01:10 - Amazon's Partial Shipment Split Removal01:45 - Why This Change Matters to Sellers02:02 - The February 20th Deadline & Last-Minute Notice02:06 - Your Two Options Moving Forward02:26 - Final Thoughts & Call to Action----------------------------------------------Follow us:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28605816/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/myamazonguys/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myamazonguySubscribe to the My Amazon Guy podcast: https://podcast.myamazonguy.comApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-amazon-guy/id1501974229Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4A5ASHGGfr6s4wWNQIqyVwSupport the show

Guy Courtin is a seasoned supply chain expert with decades of experience in the technology and supply chain space. Currently serving as Tecsys'  Vice President of Industry and Global Alliances, he has held leadership roles at 6 River Systems (a Shopify company), Infor Retail, and i2 Technologies (now Blue Yonder). He has likewise served as an industry analyst at Constellation Research, SCM World (Now Gartner), and Forrester Research. Guy holds an MBA in Management from the Olin Graduate School of Business, a Master's in International Relations from Loyola University Chicago, and a bachelor's degree in Political Science from the College of the Holy Cross. SHOW SUMMARYIn this episode of eCom Logistics Podcast,  live from MODEX 2024 in Atlanta, Dan and Ninaad engage in an insightful conversation with Guy Courtin, the VP of Industry and Global Alliances at Tecsys. They explore the complexities of change management in supply chain and warehousing, the evolution of e-commerce fulfillment, and the emerging trends in healthcare logistics. They share personal anecdotes and industry stories, highlighting challenges and innovations in inventory management, store operations, and fulfillment strategies. The discussion also delves into how healthcare providers are adapting to new fulfillment demands and the potential of drone deliveries in medical logistics.HIGHLIGHTS[00:00:48] Guy's Journey in Supply Chain[00:02:58] Challenges in E-commerce Fulfillment[00:04:55] Inventory Management Strategies[00:11:26] Change Management in Warehousing[00:14:50] Healthcare Ground Game[00:18:45] Future of Healthcare FulfillmentQUOTES[00:09:58] "Everyone thinks they have a secret sauce. There is no secret sauce. It's just ketchup." - Ninaad Acharya[00:13:45] "Change management is, I think, one of the hardest things we've seen in warehousing, in supply chain." - Guy Courtin[00:16:01] "The ground game, which is not as sexy, is still, I think, as important as this other digital strategy." - Guy Courtin[00:18:52] "The challenge, the reason why some companies do that is they just don't have the right systems to do virtual segregation." - Ninaad AcharyaFind out more about Guy Courtin in the links below.https://www.linkedin.com/in/guycourtin/This episode is sponsored by G&P Construction. If you're in need of top notch, all-inclusive Material handling solutions for logistics and commercial real estate, look no further than G&P Construction. Be sure to visit www.gandpconstruction.com to discover your one-stop shop for turnkey MHE integrations.TAGSNinaad Acharya, Dan Coll, eCom Logistics Podcast, Fulfillment IQ, Guy Courtin, Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Warehousing, E-commerce Fulfillment, Healthcare Logistics, Inventory Management, Amazon Logistics, Change Management, MODEX 2024, Tecsys Supply Chain Solutions, Tecsys

In this episode of "Product & Packaging Powerhouse," host Megan Young Gamble discusses various aspects of logistics, e-commerce, and customer experience with guests Roxann Sinclair and Amanda Martyniuk from eShipper. They cover topics such as the impact of Amazon Logistics in Canada, integrating the online and in-store shopping experience, personalized marketing, and the intersection of products, packaging, and logistics. The conversation also touches on targeting customer avatars, unboxing experiences, and the influence of freight audits, and strategic partnerships. The guests provide valuable insights on the importance of providing a seamless customer journey and adapting to evolving omnichannel marketing trends. Amanda also highlights the impact of tariff changes on North American supply chains and the benefits of leveraging eShipper's services. [Host Megan Young Gamble Links][AFFILIATE] Ready to crank out your content in as little as 5 minutes? Use Castmagic, AI powered tool to take your content creation from overwhelmed to overjoyed by saving hours of developing content. Save 20 hours by Signing up today! https://get.castmagic.io/Megan [FREEBIE] Learn about “day in the life” of a Packaging Project Manager → Get our “Starter Packaging PM Freebie” [link] https://glc.ck.page/thestarterpackagingprojectmanager Subscribe & Access our Video Vault YouTube Channel [ link] https://bit.ly/GLConYouTubeJoin our Email List [link] https://glc.ck.page/55128ae04b Follow and Connect with Megan on LinkedIn [link] https://linkedin.com/in/megangambleLearn about GLC, Packaging & Project execution firm for CPG brands http://www.getlevelconsulting.comWork with Me @ GLC, Schedule Discovery Call https://calendly.com/getlevelconsulting/15-minute-insight-session[Powerhouse Guest Roxann and Amanda's LINKS]Roxann Sinclair LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxann-s-6957413/Schedule your FREE assessment roxann.sinclair@eshipper.comAmanda MartynuikLinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/amartyniuk/Schedule your FREE assessment amanda@eshipper.comEpisode Quotes:eShipper is essentially your Expedia of shipping.The future of supply chain management: It's a very exciting time to be in this industry. There's lots of changes that are happening.The Importance of Customer Experience for Online Businesses: That delivery experience is really what can make or break that customer their final impression of you as a business. And often it's the logistics that can either make a customer very happy or write a terrible review.When you can save a customer 10% on their shipping and then you can get them another 10% back on their customs, that is net net profit.The Future of E-commerce: I think what we're seeing is kind of a shift into owning more of your own catalog on your own Shopify, Commerce, whatever website that you have and having less on Amazon.Traffic is fantastic but if you're not converting that traffic into an actual shopping cart checkout, you haven't even converted that sale. You don't have revenue in your pocket.

Case Law Update   •                  Estate of McDuffie-Connor v Neal and NSS Construction, unpublished opinion per curiam of the Court of Appeals, issued February 8, 2024 (Docket No. 358870)   •                 Christensen v Amazon Logistics, LLC., unpublished opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued April 11, 2024 (Docket No. 364919)   Trending Topics in PIP Litigation   •            Mota-Peguerp v Falls Lake Nat'l Ins Co, Docket No. 364103 (Mich Ct App, March 28, 2024) •            Innocent Third-Parties   Hosted by: Amber Rouse Holloway, Partner Secrest Wardle, Troy Nicholas R. Aukerman, Associate Secrest Wardle, Troy

In this episode, Dr. Kandace sits down with Alison Gatto, a remarkable entrepreneur, wife, and mother who has navigated the complexities of balancing personal and professional life with grace and determination. Alison shares her inspiring journey, from founding a thriving Amazon Logistics company to transitioning into a role as a personal Wellness Concierge for middle-age-less women.    Introduction to Alison Gatto: Alison introduces herself as a middle-age-less multi-potentialite, emphasizing her roles as a wife, mother, and successful entrepreneur. With over two decades of marriage and three beautiful daughters, she understands the importance of finding balance in life.    Entrepreneurial Journey and Lessons Learned: Alison shares insights into her entrepreneurial journey, detailing how she founded an Amazon Logistics company with over 200 employees. She reflects on the invaluable lessons about success and growth that she has learned along the way.    Pivoting to Wellness Concierge Services: Now embarking on a new chapter, Alison explains her transition to becoming a personal Wellness Concierge for middle-age-less women. She emphasizes the importance of prioritizing wellness and its transformative impact on both business and life. As a Wellness Concierge, Alison specializes in empowering high-achieving women in their forties and fifties. She discusses the benefits of embracing a morning routine, prioritizing self-care, and achieving a balanced lifestyle.    Simple Strategies for Integrating Wellness: Alison provides simple yet effective strategies for busy midlife women to integrate wellness into their daily routines. She emphasizes the importance of finding balance and making self-care a priority. She also touches on marriage success tips and the importance of her faith.    Conclusion: Alison concludes by offering her support to midlife women (& really ALL women) ready for a mid-life re-brand, inviting them to join her on a journey of wellness and personal growth. With her guidance, they can embrace their wisdom, prioritize self-care, and achieve success on their own terms.  Make sure to give Alison a follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alison.gatto/ This episode, like always, is not a replacement for medical or professional advice. 

Join us in this enlightening episode of the eCom Ops Podcast with Juan Camilo Meisel, CEO and founder of GRIP Shipping. Dive into the world of e-commerce logistics, uncovering the complexities and the crucial role of data-driven decision-making. Discover how Juan's journey from ButcherBox to founding GRIP Shipping is revolutionizing the way e-commerce handles perishable goods.

President Joe Biden is visiting Wisconsin for the third time to talk about his economic policy plans and highlight recent small business growth. Shawn Johnson will have the details on a dispute over how Amazon Logistics classifies its delivery drivers. And, a northern Wisconsin sawmill is facing over $1 million in new fines for workplace safety violations after the death of a 16-year-old worker.

In this episode, I am joined by Scott Ohsman, a seasoned veteran of Amazon Vendor Central and an expert in the world of eCommerce.He is also the VP of Digital Commerce at Quickfire, LLC, Speaker, Brand Strategist, and co-host of the "Always Off Brand" podcast.Scott Ohsman's journey in the retail industry began long before eCommerce took center stage. He has seen the industry undergo significant shifts, from brick-and-mortar dominance to the rise of online marketplaces.With over 28 years of experience in retail and eCommerce, Scott has not only launched over 200 brands on Amazon but also witnessed the platform's transformation from its early days to the present.In this insightful conversation, we delve into the changing landscape of Amazon, the evolution of 1P (Vendor Central) and 3P (Third-Party Sellers) dynamics, Amazon's streamlined logistics, Amazon's response to antitrust concerns, and more.Key Takeaways- Meet Scott Ohsman (01:15)- The importance of sales training (06:57)- Vendor Central (1P) evolution (09:05)- The big purge of Vendor Central in 2018 (17:01)- The major changes in 1P (19:22)- Strategic Vendor Services (21:08)- Some Amazon news (25:08)- Concerns with Amazon's streamlined logistics plan (30:26)- FTC lawsuit against Amazon (34:02)Additional Resources:- Always Off Brand Podcast by Scott Ohsman: https://alwaysoffbrand.libsyn.com/----- Schedule a FREE consultation with the Ave7 team- Grab the FREE Amazon Seller Central Checklist- Get the book “The Amazon Jungle” book by Jason Boyce- Learn more about Avenue7Media----Day 2 Podcast has a goal of helping Amazon sellers learn how to launch, grow and protect their brand on the world's largest online marketplace (and beyond).Follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode!

Cette semaine on discute de l'inarrêtable élan d'Amazon dans la logistique, des essaies cliniques de Neuralink, et des changements (oui oui!) de WhatsApp que Mike attendait depuis longtemps. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

In this episode, Corey Apirian, Founder and CEO of DaVinci Micro Fulfillment, discusses his experience in the supply chain industry, starting with his major in supply chain management at Syracuse University. He then shares his experience working for a wholesale distributor, where he learned inventory and receiving. Corey talks about his experience starting a multi-million dollar business with Amazon's drop-ship program and how he helped brands build their online strategies through a wholesaler. The episode is filled with insights on micro-fulfillment, Amazon's regional fulfillment model, and the benefits of micro-fulfillment for small and medium-sized businesses. ABOUT COREYAs an accomplished Supply Chain and Operations Leader with more than 15 years of senior management experience, Corey finds that his successes have been achieved by effectively developing and executing strategies to drive significant growth, savings, and exceptional service. He specializes in eCommerce and channel merchandising, aligning operational initiatives with corporate objectives, and building and leading high performing teams that succeed through a culture of inclusion, collaboration, and engagement. He is also proficient in product development and management, conducting successful contract negotiations, implementing continuous improvements and emerging technologies, and cultivating key relationships and partnerships. HIGHLIGHTS(00:02:14) Corey's Background(00:03:39) Starting a Multi-Million Dollar Business with Amazon's Drop-Ship Program(00:15:08) The Benefits of Micro-Fulfillment(00:15:10) The Importance of Understanding Your Assortment and Selling Strategy(00:35:11) The Potential for Automation in Sortation(00:36:14) Micro-Fulfillment vs. Quick/Fast Commerce(00:40:35) Ideal Inventory Turns for Micro-Fulfillment(00:40:38) Inventory Control and Dead Inventory(00:41:11) The Importance of Merchandising and Automation for Micro-Fulfillment(00:42:15) Finding a Good Partner for Micro-Fulfillment QUOTES (00:17:21) Explanation of direct fulfillment and earning and maintaining metrics for prime eligibility. - Corey: “You have to ship on time so that those goods not only have to be manifested on time, but they have to be scanned into the carrier network on time. They have to be delivering at the same time that Amazon told the customer that it's delivering and that has to be accurate. Right? There's like really four levels of metric. To maintain what they call a GD, Guaranteed Delivery status. And in many cases, it requires up to a six hour cycle time on orders.”(00:32:08) The disruption and innovation in last mile delivery and the potential for consolidation. - Corey: “Not to disrespect UPS, FedEx and the post office, because what they have built is just incredible over the past couple of decades. And they're the pioneers, right? And maybe on some level dealing with an innovator's dilemma, they drive down the last block to go deliver packages, but they're not a last mile carrier in the sense of that of that word, this point to point delivery and this quality delivery and the cost of that delivery, I think that's the unlock that they're trying to bring.” Find out more about Corey in the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corey-apirian/

In der heutigen Episode spricht Host Moritz Meyer mit seinem Kollegen und dem Marketplace Experten Fynn Drees über die Zukunft von Amazon. Als E-Commerce Consultant betreut Fynn bei MOVESELL hochkarätige Kunden aus unterschiedlichsten Branchen. Fynn und Moritz teilen spannende Insights zu der allgemeine Entwicklung von Online Marktplätzen. Welche Marktplätze sind besonders relevant und welche werden neben Amazon bestehen können? Im Gespräch stellen sich die beiden außerdem die Frage, ob Amazon "nur" ein Marktplatz ist. Eine Betrachtung der unterschiedlichen Geschäftszweige von Amazon und eine Einschätzung ihrer Potenziale, geben eine klare Antwort und zeigen, in welche Richtung sich Amazon entwickeln wird. Ein stärkerer Fokus auf Advertising und Profitabilität wirkt sich auch deutlich auf das Geschäft von Amazon Sellern und Vendoren aus. Welche Veränderungen sind zu erwarten und mit welchen Maßnahmen und Strategien sind Marketplace Händler am besten vorbereitet? Themen: Status Quo, Marketplace Ranking, Marketplace Growth, OTTO, Zalando, Conrad, Media Markt Saturn, Amazon Marktanteil, Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Cloud Service AWS, Amazon Advertising, Amazon Logistics, FBA, Prime, Alexa, Umsatzverteilung innerhalb von Amazon, 1P, 3P, Vendor, Seller, Hyrid Modell. Sortimentsstrategie, Amazon-only Produkte, Retail Media, shein, wish

Peter Burns is a leadership expert and has over 30 years of leadership and management experience. His professional background includes 20 years of service with the United States Army Signal Corps (retired) and recently retired after 21 years at Nokia as the Commercial. Tendering Manager for North America. Peter is the President and CEO of the Bridge Delivery Service, a last mile delivery service partner for Amazon Logistics. Peter is actively involved in his church and his community, serving as a Board member for the Frisco Chamber of Commerce, Frisco Education Foundation, FriscoPublic Art Board and Junior Achievement of Dallas. He serves on the Leadership Frisco Advisory Council, Program Manager for the Frisco Young EntrepreneursAcademy (YEA!) and is Chairman of Mindbender Academy, a Science, Technology,Engineering, Arts and Math (STEaM) camp that encourages students to consider STEAM as a profession. Peter has received a Congressional Veteran Commendation, was named 2019Frisco Distinguish Veteran of the Year, was named 2017 Frisco Style MagazinePerson of the Year, 2014 Frisco Chamber Citizen of the Year, received the BadmusLaw firm 2013 Immigrant Spirit Award and runner-up for the Dallas CowboysCommunity Quarterback Award. This show was originally recorded for Mums Say Radio at the beginning of 2022

In this podcast, Thomas Domville demonstrates Parcel - Delivery Tracking, an iOS app that enables you to access tracking information for 300 delivery services, including UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, TNT, LaserShip, Aramex, OnTrac, China Post, Amazon Logistics and many other carriers.You can use its widgets to see your upcoming deliveries and the share extension to add a new delivery directly from any other app.Amazon integration in Parcel allows you to get your packages added automatically from your Amazon account. Once an order is shipped, it will appear in Parcel.Some features, such as push notifications and tracking more than 3 deliveries are limited to premium subscribers. Current price for the premium subscription is $4.99 per year, and may vary from country to country.

Rafael Caldas e a Eficiência operacional no last mile - Modelos de entrega de última milhacom a Amazon. O Rafael é Líder da Amazon Logística no Brasil – empresa norte-americana que traz soluções para o e-commerce, computação em nuvem, streaming e inteligência artificial.O Rafael possui experiência de +20 anos nas áreas de tecnologia da informação e logística em empresas de grande porte. Atua desde 2016 como executivo da Amazon, já tendo morado e trabalhado desenvolvendo operações da Amazon Logistics no Mexico (2016 a 2017), Estados Unidos (2018) e também Australia (2019 a 2020). Desde 2020 atua como Líder da Amazon Logística no Brasil, sendo responsável pela estratégia e operações dessa unidade de negócio no país.Se você estiver ouvindo esse episódio pelo Spotify não esqueça de clicar no botão “seguir”, se você estiver ouvindo pelo Apple Podcasts deixe 5 estrelas e comentário que eu leio todos. Me adiciona também no

In today's conversation with former Amazon engineer Roman Yusufov, we discuss his perspective on Amazon's work culture, how the hiring panel works, the job leveling system, what to expect from a bar raiser interview, and much more. He shares tons of valuable advice on Roman is a nine-year Amazon veteran and a Senior Software Engineer. Throughout his tenure he's worked in various areas including Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Alexa and Amazon Logistics. He has extensive mentorship experience from giving guidance to orgs of 60-100 people to one on one mentorship of engineers of all levels.Book a call with Roman here —>  https://app.carrus.io/s/roman-yusufovShow notes and highlights[4:30] Why the interview is like a mini version of the job[8:15] How Amazon teams are structured [11:40] The importance of Amazon Leadership Principles [12:42] Roman's interview process at Amazon[14:00] What to expect from an Amazon Bar Raiser interview[19:30] What FAANG companies are really looking for [21:20] How "Job Leveling" works at Amazon, from L4 to L8 and above[30:00] Bar raisers at Amazon, their role and what to expect[37:00] How the decision making process looks like in the Hiring Panel[42:00] Getting rejected for one role and re-interviewing for a new one. Position fit vs. company fit.[45:40] Amazon's work culture, the NYT article about Amazon, and Roman's experience with work-life balance[52:50] Roman's approach to Interview Prep and 2 things you need to rememberQuestions, comments or feedback? Email me at misha@carrus.io!

In this episode, Craig talks to the seller of an Amazon FBA business created in July 2017 in the home, health & fitness, and personal care niches. Listen in to find out how the business makes an average of $128,363 per month in net profit, why the seller has decided to sell, the lessons learned from running the business, and much more. Visit https://app.empireflippers.com/listing/61144 to learn more about this business.

EP288 - News and Q4 Earnings Reports  News Amazon Stock Split Shopify Fulfillment Network eBay “The Vault” Twitter E-Commerce Pilot Retail Media Networks are on fire Inflation continues to rise Q4 Earnings Reports Winners Dicks Sporting Goods Walmart Target Neutral Best Buy Ulta Kohls Gap Nordstrom Ralph Lauren Losers Dollar Tree Abercrombie & Fitch Macy's Episode 288 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday March 10, 2022. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 288 being recorded on Thursday March 10th 2022, I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott showed listeners Jason covid is defrosting and you are getting yourself back on a plane and I saw that you went out to eat tail. Jason: [0:50] It is true I don't know if listeners can see me knocking on wood when you say that but yeah I yes went to my first post covid trade show that felt like trade show from before covid which is cool. Scot: [1:04] Sprinkle what was what was the buzz in the like the first time and well I guess in RFC some folks got together did you end up you didn't go to. Jason: [1:15] I did not go to in our app and an attendee and sit in our F was I think there are people that went in and found a good but attendance was significantly down from a normal and RF show. Scot: [1:28] Was kind of the first normal. Jason: [1:29] Yeah and the interrupt timing was just rough because that was kind of In the Heat of the Omicron variant like re-emerging and. Um but so e-tail is in Palm Springs in February you know. People are like turning off Mass mandates and it felt pretty good and so the show was sold out the hotel was fully booked and if you if I just popped you on at the trade show for. It wouldn't have felt any different than e-tail 2019 felt to me so I think people were like frankly pretty excited about getting back together. And took full advantage of the you know typical trade show activities that cocktail parties and and all the frivolity. So I did a couple of sessions I did a keynote interview with the chief marketing officer from Signet Jewelers and they have a pretty interesting story during the pandemic the, you know they even have an interesting story in the metaverse that like I didn't realize this but millions of people have gotten married on the metaverse and are buying jewelry for it. Scot: [2:39] Nice can you buy a is your diamond and ft. Jason: [2:43] In some cases yeah. Scot: [2:46] I'd like to see picture I found it. Jason: [2:49] Yeah I don't want to actually bring up the topic of buying jewelry and then tell her it's digital jewelry because that won't that won't go where I was wanting it to go. But so so that was good I did a panel on on sort of growth tactics with a bunch of kind of younger digital native Brands and so that's fun to get you know some some different perspectives and some novel stuff and I did record a couple podcast there so listeners have that to look forward to will drop those over the next few weeks and so some good good conversations with with real people in the industry. Scot: [3:26] What was the back of the hall conversations the you and I have talked a lot about the impact that the Apple and Google privacy changes have had was that kind of one of those yeah you're on the stage everything is Rosy but behind the scenes I was like oh no what are we going to do with this this whole thing that's crashing down around us. Jason: [3:44] Yeah it depends I because I feel like there's a couple of different cohorts at Eddie tell like there is a cohort of them kind of smaller direct to Consumer Brands and I think those guys are right in the Wheelhouse of those impact so that absolutely was coming up you know it there is a pretty big like e-commerce vendor community in the show and so there you know weaning into the the super high P Trend so everyone's talking about metaverse and, in ftes and trying to convince you why they're the world needs 107th personalization engine, so you know there's a fair amount of that stuff and then you know there's some of the big wholesale retailers and there they were like more interest like the trends that are impacting them the most right now are things like retail media networks and stuff like that. Scot: [4:38] Brickell all right so anything else I need to run jump in the news. Jason: [4:45] No not yet let's we got a lot of news to cover so let's get to it. Scot: [4:50] Cool well it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show if we didn't talk about a little bit of Amazon news. Jason: [4:56] Amazon news new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [5:08] Yes so one of the things it's been a busy week for Amazon so just yesterday they filed one of their SEC documents their annual report effectively and surprised Wall Street with two little good nuggets so one of them is they've they've expanded their stock buyback over time as you issue stock options and restricted stock units to employees as incentives your stock count grows and EPS is calculated by earnings / your Share account so when your chair count goes up it puts a natural pressure downward pressure on your EPS number. [5:44] So Wall Street loves the buyback so they increase the available by back to something like 20 billion which is pretty big number, but then more and more interestingly Amazon's been one of those stocks that has kind of refused to split and then just recently alphabet, I think ask is the after microphones off that announced a split and Amazon did that to this is this is one of those kind of fascinating psychological things so when you do a stock split does it change the economics at all right so you just say hey we had 500 shares in there worth a dollar and now we have to let's see if they usually do a reverse split so you have there were. So 500 shares the dollar and we're going to get down to 50 cents we have a thousand and fifty cents so the economics are the same but what happens is in many brokerage accounts you can't buy a fractional shares so it makes the retail investor Amazon stocks kind of around over a thousand dollars so when you do a split it does make it so more people can buy and then there's a psychological thing that's irrational where people just feel like it's cheaper. [6:55] Even though it mathematically is so so all that was really well received and then and it's been interesting because, they also signaled that. They're not going to be doing as much capital expenditure this year as prior year so so Amazon goes to these invest in Harvest phases and on the call the you and I covered it they were, they were pretty cagey about it and I think Wall Street didn't like that they were going to be an investment especially after covid it didn't kind of make sense they built so much fulfillment centers, so there were some elements of this where they clarified some things and it gave Wall Street a really nice kind of vibe that they're not going to be investing a ton on capex and then I thought it was interesting they announced they've announced a lot of these little kind of Acquisitions and they did one recently this company called Vico if I'm saying that right veq oh it's kind of like a multi-channel shipping solution so they've you and I have long. Posited that Amazon is not a fan of Shopify and all the gmv that they've grown in that's going through there and in Amazon's eyes they view them as a competitor and so you know. [8:09] There's a lot of speculation that they're going to come out with some kind of a Shopify killer or some kind of competitive offering to Shopify so this gives them a pretty interesting shipping kind of non Amazon shipping solution kind of like a ship station they acquired point of sale system that was based out of India then this goes back like 18 months ago they acquired a little e-commerce player out of Australia so it kind of feels like they're assembling some pieces to something so it's either little local groups doing random things or there's a big plan and they're assembling things I've said this before I'm still think. [8:48] I think the best strategy here is to take all these Services create microservices out of them, and then sell them and compete with like the fabrics and the Commerce tools is that the other one always forget it yeah you kind of so have a headless option and put it in aw that's because you already have so many developers using AWS that would be a great entry point into people that are like pay I need I need a cloud-based point-of-sale functionality of some kind or I need any of these little pieces that's my guess who what's going on and then and then some people that talk to you said all right if they do that then cows an SMB how are they going to compete with Amazon with Shopify do smbs going to use these micro services and, I think then they also build a little kind of Shopify killer on top of those microservices almost like a, demo that basically says look what you can build with these micro Services of a Shopify like platform that's what I think is going on but I'm curious to hear what you think. Jason: [9:49] Yeah so I kind of think you're wrong we'll see the I could easily see them like they're they're releasing a ton of microservices on AWS all the time right and so I will not be surprised at all if they release a stack of Commerce oriented microservices for AWS that. Could compete with Shopify I just don't think they would do that by acquiring these companies that are on like a whole disparate set of Technology stacks and you know don't have significant scale and aren't necessarily like, have some competitive IP like I'd like Amazon could buy all these could build all these capabilities that these companies have. With very little effort so I look at each one of those companies and I'm like it kind of solves a practical problem for a particular. [10:42] Stakeholder in a particular Market I mean you know Amazon's trying to expand their into Australia and they bought a Marketplace that had a bunch of sellers in Australia right Amazon's trying to capture more share in India and in India a bunch of the orders don't get shipped to the consumers home they get shipped to a retailer the Aggregates the orders and then customers go to that retail and pick it up so now they bought a POS system that a bunch of those retailers run in these small villages in India and I do think Amazon is, interested in is certainly going to make a bigger move in shipping and. You know I think if you're trying to get people to use Amazon Freight and Amazon shipping for non Amazon packages one of the things you need is a is a shipping manager software package to give to all of those, those companies so I think that's what the qos so I think I don't see these Acquisitions as some sort of super strategic set of Mike rolling up of microservices. But we shall see. Scot: [11:48] Yeah we should go back in the hot tub time machine and we record our annual predictions but next time. Jason: [11:56] And side note I will one other prediction I'm glad we're not going to go back and visit is. Um Whole Foods did open their first just walk out store in Washington d.c. this month. And I will readily admit a year ago in this show when we talked about the significance of just walk out I said. Probably be a long time before we see this in a Whole Foods because there's all these logistical challenges that like are not an Amazon go store but are in the much bigger grocery format like you know. Each has of fruit and stuff you know bulk items that have to be weighed and you know retrofitting this technology into an existing store that wasn't designed for it is a lot harder than building a purpose-built. Environment and you know there's there's challenges with things like bathrooms I listed all these things and very smugly said so don't expect to see. Just walk out in a Whole Foods anytime soon and then less than a year. Scot: [12:53] I remember you saying it was pretty much impossible. Jason: [12:55] Yeah clearly I thought it was impossible and I feel like that that created a moonshot team at Amazon which then did it. Scot: [13:06] Because Jeff is just like oh Jason's challenge me now the gauntlet is down. Jason: [13:12] Exactly so so congratulations to team Amazon I have not gotten a chance to shop that I have shop the the Amazon Fresh stores with just walk out so which is kind of an intermediate step so so I'm excited to see how that plays out. Scot: [13:27] Yeah kind of a a tangential Amazon news story we talked about this on our last episode which shut out the listeners we had really, your kind of strong engagement from from you guys about the Amazon Logistics deep dive we appreciate everyone not only listening to that at you know we were concerned it would be a little boring kind of going through all these counts of what they're doing but at least I find it riveting and but we got really good feedback on that and we appreciate when listening to that buried in that at the time we did talk about shopify's earnings where they basically came out and said their previous iteration on partnering with 3p else to do chipping hadn't worked, and this was actually predicted by by facile over it fabric I think he mentioned on the show he's been pretty vocal on Twitter about it too I'm not revealing some secret and, um Wall Street was then they said they're going to spend what was it a billion dollars on fulfillment centers which seemed laughably small especially in the context of the. [14:30] 260 ish large fulfillment centers Amazon house and that would get them two day shipping which just doesn't logically make sense to me and then Jason you pointed out that's not not even where the market is now but the update on that is Wall Street was not amused and what happens is. When you're high-flying stock with a big multiple and your your your model. [14:56] Becomes part of the story and your Shopify has these really high both gross and net margins and relatively high growth and so their growth has slowed down and then Wall Street kind of it was kind of a doomsday scenario so all streets like all right you're slowing down your growth you've got the shipping problem you always talk about how you're not worried about Amazon but something's going on here and then on top of that you know they basically, said to Wall Street we're going to change our margin structure because we're going to take all our ibadah and plugged it into this spying warehouses so Wall Street hates it when you make a change like that and you kind of say I'm a 80% gross margin business and now I'm going to be a 60% right whatever it is so the stock has like been in a world of hurt so it's basically gone down by half I think depending on whatever timeframe you look at and then there's been a lot of stories about folks leaving and it's kind of create a little bit of chaos so it's going to be interesting to see can Shopify executed on this can they do it and not I'm really freaked out there investor base what happens with employee turn so so it's kind of the first time they've had a bit of a misstep or or a resetting of their valuation so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Jason: [16:12] Yeah yeah I I've been following closely I side note on facile dazzles the CEO of fabric which is a headless Commerce company that in some ways competes with Shopify and I actually ran into him in detail and side note he just raised they just raised like two hundred million dollars at a billion dollar valuation. Scot: [16:33] Yeah I'm a super jealous of his ability to raise capital. He seems to preemptively do it he was always like I know we just raised a hundred but these guys really want end so we're letting him in for like 200 at a you know a bazillion dollar valuation so high class problem. Jason: [16:49] You would know better than I but I have heard the advice frequently repeated that the best time to raise money is when you don't need it. Scot: [17:01] It is true yes I always raise money when I'm down to my last dime which is the worst. Jason: [17:06] Yeah I did tell him I was expecting like fancier suits in a bigger Booth a detail and he seems like he's not spending the money on that stuff it's. Scot: [17:17] Now he's hiring Engineers like crazy. Some other news and I know Jason you have some to run through Saga through this quick the still follow eBay because it's kind of an interesting story and you know they've even been to the pandemic they. Jason: [17:34] Sorry for our younger listeners eBay is a website that sells stuff like Amazon but before Amazon. Scot: [17:41] Yeah it's this auction format where you like you takes a week to figure out if you bought the product or not it's not not great in today's instant, instant feedback but to be fair most of their products are sold with buy it now so they're auctions is not the majority but they're still kind of always called the auction company so they've had that. There's all these startups that are nibbling away at eBay in different categories because for the longest time I felt like eBay should have vertical buying experiences because if you're a comic book collector you want, to search for certain things that matter to you versus a shoe collector versus a, electronic Gadget buyer versus whatever but they stubbornly would never vertical eyes that experience and so now they are very closing the experience so they're finally kind of waking up to this there's let's see they're going to have some some different experiences for what was it, it was couple luxury goods shoes sports cards then this interesting there's this kind of one interesting Trend in Collectibles that I think is going to go into other areas is. [18:50] Different ownership models so taking a physical good and putting a digital ownership on top of it so there's a site called dibs and this actually came up Greg Bertinelli we had on the show two years ago he's a VC that really kind of execs eBay guy and he's focuses on these kinds of models but what dibs does is let's say you have some really cool rare baseball card and you could certainly sell it and then extract all the value but what if you could. [19:19] You put it in a digital Vault a vault somewhere and then you could sell 40% of it so you could get some liquidity from your baseball card but you still own it and then you you could you don't have to sell the whole card, um and then you know some of those fractional rights could be shared and and whatnot or if someone wanted to buy the whole card they could and then you could transfer to them and it would stay in the ball so there's all these companies that are doing really Innovative things around this all this this side of digital marketplaces is within the purview of the SEC so all this is this is not crypto which is kind of over on its side the side kind of going rogue outside the SEC for the most part these are all blessed by the SEC and and then there's two that are very popular ones called Rally Road in the other ones called Otis and they do more they actually go out and buy various Collectibles and things and then you can have fractional ownership so for example in the comic book world one of the most famous comic books in my generation is called Amazing Fantasy 15 and that's the first Spider-Man. I don't have that comic book because it's like 300 thousand dollars or something like that and that's that's crazy and but you know. [20:31] But it's actually an interesting investment because I've watched it for 30 years and it's gone from five thousand dollars when I was a kid to three hundred thousand dollars now so. You can invest in that by buying a fraction so eBay announced their starting this thing called the eBay vault which is going to be this 31,000 square feet secured facility we're going to be able to store all these assets they say it's going to the largest one in the world which didn't make a hundred percent since me because that just doesn't I guess we just had you know Mark on, talking about million square foot fulfillment center so 31,000 square feet just doesn't seem huge but I guess it's full of vaults. Then that also enable them the whole eBay model and this is kind of like the Shopify story we're for the longest time they refused to touch a product because you know they're their margins are super high because they never touch the product, so it's a zero asset business well all these companies have come along that touch the product so there's. I mentioned some of them but then there's like goat and the shoe company's stock X where they'll actually get the sneakers in and they'll thumbs up and say we've looked at these These are really you know Michael Jordan error. Sneakers and they we've authenticated them there's a lot of companies that do this in handbags who's the one that does it for apparel. We could put all your apparel you want to sell in a bag and they'll take it and. Jason: [21:57] Rio Rio our thread upper. Scot: [21:59] Thredup thredup that's what I'm looking for so it's interesting if you look at it every eBay category someone has kind of come in and added a high-touch experience and chewed up a fair amount of the GMB that used to be on eBay so they're finally kind of reacting to them, and then I thought you would find this interesting they are going to launch a, they're gonna let you put videos on your listings and then they're going to have a live video streaming pilot for sellers so that could be kind of interesting. I'm kind of excited to see you like what your average eBay sellers live stream looks like it's going to be it's going to be kind of a. You know a menagerie of things to look at there that'll be funny and then I thought you being a payments guy you'd be really excited about this Innovation that call it the digital wallet and lets you store balance from your eBay sales and then you can use those let's say Jason you sold one of your widgets for $100 you can use that hundred dollars to now go buy stuff. Jason: [22:52] Wow that's an amazing idea. Scot: [22:54] Yeah it's also known as PayPal 1997 so so so let's. Jason: [23:00] For our younger listeners as Scott's not being sarcastic PayPal did start out as a eBay digital wallet and they spun it off so this is kind of a redo. Scot: [23:10] Yeah yes they're basically having to you know. They've got divorced from PayPal they had this they got separated from PayPal and then they went their separate ways and now they're basically having to just reinvent PayPal instead of eBay it's kind of. Kinda weird but they you know being eBay they didn't just say well let's do it everyone else doesn't just license stripe they've got all this features they had to kind of like go do it all themselves so they're now just finally getting a digital wallet so there's been this period of time where if you sold on eBay there was no way to take this fund and then put them back on eBay you just you know and I've been doing some eBay selling and it's like super painful it's like constantly emailing me and it's like it feels like literally like, the first version of PayPal so so doing some Innovative things there and then other areas they're just kind of like they've been hobbled because of some of the corporate structure things that have gone on. Jason: [24:01] Yeah and we are teasing eBay a little bit but In fairness they still are like the second or third largest e-commerce site in the u.s. so. Scot: [24:09] Yeah I love eBay and I wish I still feel like there's this big kind of nugget of goodness in there that needs to be unlocked they just needed to kind of do it faster and kind of more aggressive with. Jason: [24:21] That now did you talk about the vault already. Scot: [24:24] I did. Jason: [24:25] Yeah so prediction for next year that I'm going to put on my list is there's going to be a Nicolas Cage movie where he has to break into the Vault and steal something you heard it here first exactly in Ft. [24:45] Yeah there's nothing Scott likes better than than talking about like Amazon antitrust and inflation has his two favorite topics but I should note while we're covering all the news that the, the monthly inflation numbers came out and there's there's a ton of different numbers but one that gets talked about the most is this Consumer Price Index which is kind of a random basket of goods that were selected in the 1950s, and based on that index over the last 12 months that index has gone up by 7.9% so that's the. The highest it has gone up in the last I don't know more than 30 years, so that's pretty significant and that was one of the big talking points at e-tail is. You know what what are the impacts of inflation going to be on the market and in Howard consumers going to react so, there is significant inflation out there right now and it is like factoring into a lot of retail and e-commerce players plans are you worried about inflation at all Scott you think it's overhyped what's the. Scot: [25:53] Now I'm very very worried about its going to hit that. I don't think it's in control at all and it's in this kind of spiral I think we'll hit the this stagflation thing so you know imagine your retailer your labor is going up imagine you're an e-commerce gas prices are you know hitting between four and seven dollars depending where you are in the country so now you have all these yeah I'm shocked we haven't seen fuel surcharges for everyone maybe they have and I just missed them so now it's going to be, more expensive to ship stuff and then you have to raise your prices and then that causes more inflation and then you know and then people need more wages to afford the stuff you just raise the prices on it that there's a vert there's kind of a worry there's a bit of a flywheel there that I don't know how you break out. Jason: [26:43] Yeah no and even before all of this fuel unrest like fuel was already the, the category with the highest inflation and now it's you know likely to go even much higher so that that's in very unfortunate and it does I've seen some studies, and this is may be counterintuitive but when you think about it it makes sense. Inflation is impacting the the low price sellers the most right so if you if you have a little extra margin in your product you can act as a shock absorber a little bit and absorb some of this inflation but if you are, are selling at razor-thin margins so think dollar stores like they're getting hit the hardest by inflation and. Scot: [27:30] The other three dollar stores now. Jason: [27:31] Exactly and the consumers that shop lower-priced retailers which you know tend to skew younger consumers so Jen's ears. [27:42] They're feeling inflation much more than older cohort so it's. It is in unfortunate and definitely has a potential to be stifling on on a lot of the growth we've been talking about over the last couple of years. So awkward transition off of that. Ring in a piece of news from from last week Nordstrom became the the latest retailer to launch a retail media Network. And I will talk more about. What I think the prospects are for a Nordstrom retail MIT media Network on another show but I just wanted to use that to sort of highlight. It's one of the topics that's coming up most in my conversation with retailers and Brands is. Every retailer is leaning into launching these advertising networks like we talked on our Amazon Deep dive about Amazon disclosing, the revenue from from their Network and it's huge so every retailer and their brother is trying to launch one and they're trying to collect dollars from every brand and the brands don't really know how where and why they should be investing in them so there's a, a lot of discussion and test and learn. And debate at the moment about retail media Network so I did knock out my position on them on Forbes article that I'll link to but I was going to propose to you that we should, finder there I guessed and do a deep dive in retail media networks in an upcoming show. Scot: [29:12] Yeah I don't think anyone knows more about it than you are so maybe it'll just be a jacen solo deep death. Jason: [29:17] Yeah I think 10 of my co-workers and pupusas just rolled over in their grave when they're just say that they're like dude that dude doesn't need his head to be any bigger and we all know more about it than he does. Scot: [29:27] Well we get a lot of listener feedback that's essentially more Jason so can never have too much Jason. Jason: [29:34] That may have something to do with I have the direct email to the feedback account. Scot: [29:38] Me Jason: [29:39] And then one last piece of news that happened yesterday is our friends at Twitter, um expanded in e-commerce pilot that they've been running so they have had this this limited pilot where you could essentially on your Twitter account. Sell three items so you kind of you had a carousel that could show up in your Twitter account for these three items and the expansion is that they now let you upload a product feed with 50 or 10,000 items in it so you can you can send Twitter 10,000 items you sell and at any given time you can, activate up to 50 of them so you kind of have a little mini store with kind of like a, you know a category page with a bunch of product tiles in it and you can you can shop through any of these these 50 items, and it's it's what we would call a non-endemic check out so if you decide you want to buy one of these items you don't buy it. From Twitter and give Twitter your payment information you click on that product tile and it takes you to. The that Brands e-commerce site on their on their store and you check out there so it's kind of a. [30:59] Twitter cause it e-commerce but it's really a referral site to these Brands and it's interesting that there. They've tried a lot of different Commerce experiences none of them have been a home run, this is a new one and I have to say and I know you have had similar feelings about this I'm kind of skeptical that the referral is a very good customer experience because what tends to happen is. You upload this product fee that you know was probably accurate when you uploaded it but this is all Dynamic data something that you upload goes out of stock or the price changes or you you fix an error in your CMS on the URL and so that now the product listing on your website, doesn't perfectly match the product listing. On Twitter and that you know customers really don't like that when they click a product at One Price or in one color or you know that that you say is available and then you get to the website and it's, a different price or a different color or not available and on launch day they had five. Different vendors that could sell stuff and I click through all of them and three of them you know, had we're selling five products that were already wrong on day one so it looks a little problematic. Scot: [32:17] You have literally had this like conversation with five iterations of the Scituate ER and it goes like this is super. They tend to be this isn't just one of al-ahly Silicon Valley companies they're like super arrogant where insert company name and we know all about software okay and hey we're going to do this Marketplace and it's gonna be great and here's how it's going to work we're going to sell stuff and we're going to run people through this check out and then at the end we want to figure out how much inventory there's and I was like well you could do that but that's exactly wrong right because you want to before someone dies something you want to make sure you have it in stock or else it's a consumer is going to get really frustrated and leave and they're always like well it's a beta we can fix that later why invest in real time inventory now and then they never got a beta because us so then they're always like I'm like how'd the test go and like well consumers hated it and I'm like so we're not moving forward and I'll say will you realize you set yourself up to fail, like no our data indicates that they wouldn't have engage with it even if the inventory thing worked you're just like. [33:23] I don't understand so we'll see if yeah they don't don't understand the importance of this stuff and that the customer Journey they want you know people want, colors to be the same variance the all the all the blocking and tackling of e-commerce is actually pretty hard if you don't think it through and most of these companies this kind of say oh my God third party cookies are going away we need an e-commerce solution and then it travels down to an engineer that that has no idea how to how to get it done. Jason: [33:55] Yeah and I guess In fairness I don't there's no easy answer like one of the five beta clients is Verizon and I don't know this to be the case but highly likely the Verizon told Twitter we don't want you to take the customers money because then you're the seller of record we want you to send customers to our website right so like the. You've got this conundrum that that like the brands that want to sell stuff want want to own the customer they don't want to rent the customer from Twitter but then you know when you do have this kind of two step experience it totally breaks and it's got as you know we have these kind of consistency problems, just on our own website so when you add Twitter to the mix like it gets much worse and it's it never works for customer experience. Scot: [34:42] Yet built a whole company to solve this and it has like 120 Engineers working on it all the time it's a hard problem it's not it's not going to be something you can like put like a five-person engineering team on and have this great integrated e-commerce experiences just like not going to happen. Jason: [34:56] Yeah but that company you just mentioned sound like such a good idea though that sounds cool. Scot: [35:00] Thanks thanks it's been a good run. Jason: [35:03] Especially after you turned over the keys to competent leadership I feel like that was been a. Scot: [35:08] Finally hit its stride after I got out of the scene. Jason: [35:11] Exactly so I thought we would try something new we just covered a bunch of interesting to us but random news over the last two weeks it also kind of is, quarterly earnings season and so a bunch of retailers over the last couple weeks since our last show have had their their Q4 earnings which of course also gives us their their 2021 earnings and we could do it a tower show on all these earnings but what I thought we would just try to do is a earnings rapid fire. Because we are known for for being able to summarize things really briskly and and concisely what do you what do you say to that. Scot: [35:54] Plus rapid fire this puppy lightning room. Jason: [35:56] Awesome so what I've done is I've taken all the companies that I thought would be relevant to our listeners and I've bundled them into three buckets what I'm calling the winners which are companies that had a really good year what I'm calling the neutrals which kind of you know tread water and when I'm calling the losers, um which are you know the folks that lost ground so in my winners category the first earnings is Dick's Sporting Goods they actually had a mediocre Q4 they were up 5.9% versus, 20:21 there in 2021 was up 28% versus 2019 so so decent growth, um the their digital was actually down Q4 of this year so you'd go Jason why are there winner well, the if we look at their full year their sales in 2021 were up forty percent from their sales in 2019 so the so, huge growth throughout the pandemic and they were such a big winner in the first year of the pandemic that they still had growth in the second year but it was on top of these huge comps so, um so you know forty percent growth on a two-year stack you know for a retailer of their size, is a huge win and just a fun stat I'm trying to track for a bunch of these guys that now puts them at 27 percent digital sales so one out of every four dollars that dick stakes in, is from their e-commerce site. Scot: [37:24] Does that purpose. Jason: [37:27] It would include both of us are curbside pickup. Scot: [37:32] Okay that's Jean. Jason: [37:34] Um so then my second winner is Walmart. The their Q4 was up 5.6% you know again they're the largest retailer in the world so they have the hardest number to move, and 5.6% is considerably up from there they're sort of historical average and that's on a big comp because they were up 8.6 percent this quarter, last year but the real reason they're a big winner is e-commerce. On a two-year stack was up is up 70% so this was. The third largest e-commerce site in the United States two years ago just behind Amazon and eBay there now the second largest e-commerce site in the US and they've grown 70% in the last two years so that's astronomical and again. They're their full year sales were pretty good up 6.4% last year up 15% on a two-year stack and this is a company that normally goes up two or three percent a year so. So I another big winner and then my biggest winner for the year is Target so. [38:47] They had great numbers across the board they were up eight point nine percent for the quarter they were up 20% this quarter last year so too. You know big numbers on top of big numbers again on the full year they're up 20% versus 20 versus two years ago and their digital is a standout in all of this there there. Two years ago their digital was up 145 percent and then they grew another 21 percent last year on top of that. So monster numbers and I like how they break out their sales so so just a couple of things to know they're the only company I've seen that report two. Segments they report store originally needed sales versus digitally originated so where did the order get placed, and they also separately report store fulfilled sales versus fulfillment center fulfilled sales so. [39:46] Eighty percent of their orders comes from a store 20% of their stores, of their orders come from digital but 96 percent of all their sales are fulfilled from a store so virtually all their e-commerce has fulfilled from the store what's interesting about that is what that means is they are selling. The 60,000 items that fit in a store are all of their sales versus if you look at, Amazon eBay Walmart a huge chunk of their e-commerce sales are this super long tail of millions of skews so it, Target had big numbers and they're doing it differently than everyone else and then the the number I talked about the most is. [40:30] You know they've been really successful with their own Brands and to kind of put that in perspective about 26 percent of all of their sales where sales of of exclusive stuff you can only buy at Target so those own Brands were 30 billion of their 106 billion in sales, so that's phenomenal and then you you were talking about curbside pickup the curbside pickup numbers are also silly in 2020 during the pandemic curbside pickup went up six hundred percent at Target and then last year, you know that six hundred percent is crazy but you go oh yeah because all the stores closed and people had to drive up but then last year when stores reopened you'd expect that to dip way down and they curbside pickup went up another 70% on top of the six hundred percent from the previous year so so curbside pickup is a huge growth they, you know they bought a curbside company right before the pandemic and so I like they're kind of clicking on all cylinders right now. Scot: [41:33] The 96% number 95. That's so I'd go to a lot of targets and I've never seen like, most stores that have shift from Storer there's like some corner where it's like a total poop show of people trying to, package stuff in the middle of the store and things Target is that true I never see that and it's kind of fascinating to me it seems like the stores would have this huge shipping piece that I'm not seeing somewhere, and it's not like they have a ton of storage in the stores. Jason: [42:04] So they did a really. Scot: [42:06] Just a shipped is it shipped that's doing it is that kind of what they're coming in there. Jason: [42:09] No it like they did a remodel for most of the Target stores where they actually Shrunk The Selling space so they used to have no back-of-house like they'd have all the live inventory on the floor and they actually Shrunk The Selling Space by like 10 or 15 percent and built a shipping center in the back of the stores that you can't see right, and so they now have dedicated shipping they like they literally had to go like negotiate with other carriers because carriers are used to delivering stuff to these stores but not picking stuff up from these stores so they had to work all that and they're there doing so much volume now that you know what they're big players got they have their own sortation centers and they work differently than Amazon the search the stores instead of shipping to the customer. Like do multiple shipments a day via private trucks to the sortation center and then all the items are shipped from the sortation center and so that lets them use this like hub-and-spoke and have super stores that have extra inventory for these orders but all the inventory is sitting in a store until a customer orders it and then it goes through this this multifaceted distribution system to either go to the front of the store for curbside pickup via shipped or to the back of the store out to a sortation center and then via USPS to a customer nearby. Scot: [43:31] You want ship from store came out everyone in e-commerce kind of laughed because you're taking the most expensive commercial real estate, and using it as a shipping and warehouses are dirt cheap well it's inverted so. Jason: [43:46] I say that used to be true. Scot: [43:47] So now it's actually probably more economical to ship from the store than anywhere else from open Pure commercial real estate angle because covid is killed so much retail space and then at you know at some point like office parks. That that that used to be the highest and then you so you should be Office Park retail and warehouse and now it's Warehouse retail and Office Park so so it's totally all all mixed up and creating a whole nother economic model that we'll have to kind of see what happens there's you know a lot of people are taking these malls and converting them into fulfillment centers I was in one I was in a Sam's the other day and I was like. Billy I'm in feels like a Sam's that I guess it was a Sam's and it was one of those sounds that he commissioned and they turned it into this weird kind of open Office Space and it was it was very strange because it felt like. Literally having an office in a Sam's. Jason: [44:41] Yeah yeah that doesn't sound appealing when you describe it like that. Scot: [44:44] And they had that whole what do you. Jason: [44:46] Do they still have like like samples necks. Scot: [44:48] Well they were saying they were saying. They had a hard time putting some like 3D printers in it they had a hard time because the floor was angled and it was because it was like where some freezers were and they dangled the floor to act as drainage and I guess they had to come in and re-engineer like a whole big section of it. And I shopped in this house before too so it's kind of weird like a new kind of where all the stuff was in her but they also do that what is that we some of your buildings do it where you check in and you don't have a spot every day as a fan. Jason: [45:21] Like hoteling. Scot: [45:22] Yeah hoteling so they like the couldn't they couldn't understand like why no one wanted to come to work so like make it so you know Dad like all these impediments for people to come to work and they're like we don't know why more people aren't coming in it's like well. You've made them feel like you know kind of fourth class citizens they kind of they don't have a place to sit every day they can't bring any personal items it was kind of funny and they're basically sitting in a Sims. Jason: [45:48] All right yeah I think there's going to be an interesting question about like reuse of all this the the brick and mortar space then closes so but it doesn't sound like you're you're going to be investing in the we work 2.0. Scot: [46:02] Pregnant. Jason: [46:04] Side note and I I miss the most by far important and Brilliant move in that whole Target Whitney the major feature they announced is that you can now order Starbucks to be included in your curbside pickup order. Scot: [46:20] Game changer. Jason: [46:22] That that does feel like a game changer. Scot: [46:25] I was picturing you being first alone. Jason: [46:27] It feels like they're targeting a couple people than I know. Scot: [46:30] Well as fellow Starbucks kind of Sword the target ones I have found out you're not as good or know that you like the. Jason: [46:39] Controversy. Scot: [46:40] Some of it the taste is not the same. Jason: [46:43] Their franchisees. Scot: [46:45] Yeah and you can't mobile order which is government I guess this is mobile ordering. Jason: [46:49] Yeah yeah so I think it is a clever move to like so these impulse and consumed on the way home items at curbside I bet we're going to see a lot more of that but I am with you if I have the option I usually like to go to a Starbucks Company Store over a franchisee because the the experience is more consistent at the company store but I'm saying that to someone that's selling a bunch of franchises so we should maybe be careful about that. So neutrals I have my first neutral is Best Buy they had a slightly negative quarter they were down 2.3 percent they were up 12 percent this quarter last year. You know they actually did decent their kind of, two-year stack they've grown about ten percent which is you know above what what a lot of retailers grow, but they they are in a category that in my mind like seems like should have really benefited from the pandemic and you just don't see. Like this huge huge benefit in their full year numbers so I put them in my neutral. They are now at 39 percent of all their their sales are digital and at the peak of the pandemic it was over 50 by the way. [48:10] So certainly increasingly their most important store Ulta beauty you know they're their company that was probably pretty negatively affected by the the pandemic and they had you know a decent year their full year comps. Um we're. [48:27] Pretty significantly this year but it was because they were so awful last year so they were down 20 percent last year they're up 30% this year so they're up on the two-year stack but not amazingly, and then all the apparel guys like in my mind there's two kinds of apparel guys there's apparel guys that had a horrible Court year last year and or two years ago and did better last year and ones that, had a horrible year two years ago and are still really struggling right so Kohl's Gap and Nordstrom and Ralph Lauren are all in that kind of. Had an atrocious year two years ago and are having a decent little recovery this year. Um and then like Abercrombie and Macy's I would put in that category of had an atrocious what your. Two years ago and you know so far pretty weak recovery this year. So those are my first two losers are Abercrombie and Macy's and then someone who you would think would be really poised to benefit from, the kind of economic downturn but have really struggled over the last two years are the dollar stores and and especially Dollar Tree, their Q4 was decent it was up. 2.5% but they're they're basically up 1.1 percent for the year. Which is you know pretty slow growth when the industry grew like 20%. [49:53] So that that is my super rapid fire earnings recap are you impressed. Scot: [50:00] Nice I am I like how you segment it do the dollar guys. But I didn't listen to the reports are they signing inflation is kind of basically or is it like so it's their own pricing but I imagine going after that value or any consumer unfortunately they're they're the ones that get hit the hardest with inflation is that was that kind of what's happened in there. Jason: [50:23] Yeah so that that is happening now like most of their negative performance over the last two years is kind of dollar stores are the least digital so in the pandemic when people are going to the stores last they they became a less viable option right like if you didn't want to go to a Target you could shop from Target online like pretty seamlessly but dollar stores very often don't offer e-commerce they were disproportionately impacted by supply chain disruptions right so you know if you're a big General Merchant you could make all these plays to try to line up merchandise but you know the dollar stores are trying to buy. Distressed inventory in remaindered remainer remaindered inventory so they like didn't really have the option to be as proactive as some of the the, the discount General merchants and so so they had a lot of supply chain disruption so that those were there, they're bad news the last two years there's a school of thought that they'll, have a they'll be decently positioned in an economic downturn but but we shall see. Scot: [51:29] Coble thanks for doing that. Jason: [51:31] If that was helpful for you we will remind you that the way you can repay us as you can jump on iTunes and leave us that five-star review. Scot: [51:40] Thanks everyone we appreciate it and until next time. Jason: [51:44] Happy commercing.

EP287 - Amazon Supply Chain Deep Dive with Marc Wulfraat http://jasonandscot.com Marc Wulfraat is President of MWPVL, a global supply chain and logistics consulting firm, and one of the foremost experts outside of Amazon, into Amazons supply chain. In this episode to do a deep dive into all the elements of Amazon's supply chain, how it compares to other third party logistics providers, and most importantly if and how other retailers should think about competing against the enormous advantage that Amazon's logistics infrastructure provides Episode 287 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday February 17, 2022. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 287 being recorded on Thursday February 17th 2022 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason were about 300 episodes into what I would like to call our podcasting journey and sometimes our timing has been terrible over that 300 episodes sometimes we roll the dice and it comes up the right way tonight's episode is probably the best timing episode we've ever had I mention this because yesterday Shopify announced their Q4 earnings that were pretty strong but then they dropped a bit of a bombshell on Wall Street they announced that they're going to spend over a billion dollars on the next 3 years on what they call sfm Shopify fulfillment Network and they're going to compete with Amazon's FBA capabilities and they also kind of said and we're going to essentially get to 2-day delivery across 90% of the United States you and I were skeptical about that on on social media I said that's nice but Amazon has spent over 80 billion to get there and then you said. Jason: [1:37] Yeah that there are also targeting a service level that's kind of antiquated like like to day is Amazon 2010 here in 2022 you know it's at worst next day and increasingly at same day for millions of skews so I was a little surprised that they their big splash was that they were going to invest a billion dollars to get Amazon service level from 10 years ago. Scot: [2:00] Yeah that's where our timing gets interesting because you and I have long wanted to do an Amazon Logistics fulfillment Deep dive and the person that knows more about this than anyone except for the folks inside of Amazon is Mark Wolfe rat he is the president of mwp DL and we are really excited to have him on the show talk about all things Logistics. Marc: [2:23] Well thank you kindly for having just gone through some really appreciate it before this. Jason: [2:27] Oh my gosh Mark were thrilled to have you Scott's too shy to mention it but but this is a rare circumstance where Scott is a fanboy of you because, every time there's there's new data about Amazon's investment in their various elements of the fulfillment Network he's forwarding stuff to me and he's like hey did you see what Mark and cover this week so I'm probably not gonna be able to get a word in edgewise but before Scott jumps in with the questions we do always like to get a brief background of our guests and I'm super curious understand how you got into the supply chain space and and sort of what led you to found em W PV l. Marc: [3:12] Oh gosh well did I was a mathematician in my University days and, I just accidentally got a job as a consultant you know what I got out of school and it was we didn't know what the word supply chain was back then it just didn't exist so I started a Consulting and distribution and then, eventually went out and founded my own company and you know today we called Supply chains for 35 years I've been, what the cost supply chain Logistics Consulting all over the world and it's been a blast I've enjoyed every minute of it. Jason: [3:48] Very cool and does I think of you as publishing all this Amazon specific data I assume that there's a non philanthropic commercial aspect to MB mmm W PV L are you selling consulting services to people that are trying to solve supply-chain problems to analysts like what can you tell us a little like what's the elevator pitch for your firm. Marc: [4:16] You know that the whole thing about Amazon that we do is really for intellectual curiosity yet there's a little bit of money there but it doesn't it doesn't pay the bills so to speak, you know really we work for other retailers that compete against Amazon and about 15 years ago when Amazon was becoming a household name. I realized that they were very secretive about everything going on around but they didn't talk much about, how they went to Market and as a supply chain practitioner I said well. To wouldn't it be interesting to start diving into this and and I hunkered down in my basement and started to you know research the company and over the last 15 years 11 bowled we put together you know, we'll put all the grease and we put our 10,000 hours into this we've got a huge database on every building they operate globally. [5:13] We monitor the people that work in those buildings we have engineered the economics underneath the hood so to speak, productivity rates than unit volumes package volumes Etc and that's enabled us to understanding your economics for their e-commerce operation, including things like one of us automation done for them. And that enables us to be more powerful as a consultant when we go to market for the rest of the industry and and they greatly appreciate the abilities that we have in terms of being. You know conversant on areas like strategy which is a big part of what we do so I'll stop there. Scot: [5:55] Yeah very cool so yeah I mean if you got to study the best to figure out how to you know, scale up other other folks so we definitely want to jump into this a kind of defer to you on the best way to explain to listeners the shape of the Amazon infrastructure from where I sit you've got kind of the core is the Fulfillment centers and these are these giant multi million square-foot buildings that house and ship product then there's sortation centers delivery stations then they've built this kind of airplane Network across that how would you if you were at a if you were going to Justice and our listeners are pretty Savvy on this so how would you describe kind of the the core infrastructure that Amazon has right now. Marc: [6:41] You just mentioned the core of it the I think a lot of folks don't realize that even before the Fulfillment center gets the inventory, there's an important component to their supply chain which is called the inbound receiving Center and the inbound receiving Center is a holding tank, sir inventory it is not meant to serve the public it's meant to if we to replenish inventory at the Fulfillment centers, so typically what happens is when imported merchandise hits the apart. It's brought from there into one of these inbound receiving centers it stays there until it's needed at the Fulfillment center. And not doesn't just apply to Imports there's quite a bit of domestic merchandise that follows that logic as well so instead of, ramming the Fulfillment centers with inventory like Christmas wrapping paper and I arrived in say the month of June or July, instead of overstuffing and bloating the Fulfillment centers the hold it it means inventory tanks at the ports and then one month Christmas wrapping paper is needed at the Fulfillment centers they'll start shipping that say closer in November December. [7:55] So that's really the first component of the supply chain are all of the major retailers like Walmart Target Home Depot they all do something similar they just called an import Distribution Center. [8:06] Sanders come in various flavors the one that I think most of us recognize is the small sortable fulfillment center, with goods are small enough to fit inside one of those yellow totes that can ride the conveyor system and go from picking the packing, large not suitable for Fun Centers. And they are usually a million square feet of me contain all the product that's too big to fit in those yellow totes and anything from an umbrella to a gas barbecue to an appliance that kind of thing. We have specialty for Fun Centers that handle merchandise categories that are unique for a reason that perhaps they need some type of material handling. Um you know requirement that is different. For example apparel and Footwear or jewelry and even things like car parts or textbooks. And then from there you have after the performance center I mean think of the Fulfillment center as being. A place where inventory is kept and where orders are picked act and put into the shipping carton. From there the typical shipping carton will now flow to us for Tatian Center which is a primary sort those buildings typically handle a 200 mile radius. [9:25] They hit the packages get sorted by ZIP code palletized and then Trot to the nearest delivery station for that zip code. Yes it's an Amazon Logistics delivery. [9:38] Otherwise you will go to a post office or USPS post office that handles that zip code and that's typically, the packages that are destined for the room low population density areas areas where you have high population density like Urban Suburban areas, Amazon has built out their delivery Station Network. So that they can deliver those packages themselves to have better speed more control and you know shall we say the capacity energy capacity to handle their package volume that's consistently growing. And then of course there's UPS UPS picks up at the Fulfillment center so they don't go to the circulation Center the pickup directly at the foam in Center and they handle all the packages that, are what I call out of region you think of a customer that might live in Montana or Amazon has no infrastructure, PS would be delivering packages to Montana because Amazon doesn't have any Traditions Energy Delivery stations out there. [10:37] So that's kind of the threefold passion others also are free and to that extent Amazon currently leverages 43 airports around the country. Packages that are going are free or typically. Adam should have picked in a fulfillment center for a customer that's Amazon Prime at lives very far away from where that item was picked ideally in a perfect world you'd never have your free because every fulfillment center Woodstock every item. And everybody would live close to a fulfillment center so you want me to do this because it f8 in general cost seven times more than brown free. So you don't want to do are afraid of unless you have to but it's an important part of Amazon's competitive positioning because if you're going to offer first to Coast to day service level for Amazon Prime. Then you need her for you you can't get from Seattle to New York using ground free that would be five days. So that's an important component to very expensive component what they do so packages will go fulfillment center to the air hub, their hub from their planes will typically fly at to our regional airport public Dallas or Hebron Kentucky where their brand new airport Hub is been opened up last year, and then from there the plans will take the packages to their respective regions and then from there to the delivery stations that end up delivering to the customer. So that's where the I would say the main components of the supply chain I haven't talked about everything but that's the main just. Scot: [12:06] Prickle and then so so when it goes to air it's kind of a bug right because you know when it should have said Jason orders an Xbox and it's not near him in Chicago and it has to go out west or east and then fly it to him to since he's in the center of the country that may be a bad example but let's say there's someone on the west coast they order an Xbox it's not in stock and they have to ship it from the east coast and what does the network gets smart so do they have the software that would then say all right we flown six of these across the country we need to kind of rebalance and get a lot of those closer to the West Coast is that kind of how it works. Marc: [12:40] Yeah I think you're exactly right there's artificial intelligence you know where do you stock an item, becomes a pretty important aspect of their business so I don't want to put windshield wiper blades that are for the winter in Miami, in the Fulfillment center there right I'd rather have that open Detroit or Chicago so having the smarts to know if you're going to have 15 million items in a fulfillment center. You want to have the smarts to position the rate 15 million items in each one of those small sortable fun answers. And similarly if there's called 360 million items on the Amazon Marketplace that have been sold. You're not going to be able to put 360 million items in every building. So you have to have the smarts to be able to say if I see something will be frequently. Um and it's going long-distance how can I fix that problem and save money and increase, quality of service by adding either stop him or places or stock in different places so that's all part of the artificial intelligence behind the scenes that is part of the Amazon secret songs. Scot: [13:50] Yeah let's put some members on this so we've got inbound how many of those do you think are just kind of roughly are there in the system. Marc: [14:00] The inbound receiving centers. Scot: [14:02] Yeah. Marc: [14:03] We can't 29 right now within the US and there's about 11 more on the way. Scot: [14:10] Could you be more specific. Marc: [14:11] Sorry I. Scot: [14:12] I'm just kidding that's what I love that's why I love about your data it's like down to the like you know decimal points of square footage so your how about fulfillment centers just all all flavors I guess. Marc: [14:26] In the u.s. there's author fulfillment centers add up to roughly about 287. Scot: [14:37] Jason for the longest time didn't Walmart have like eight is mm I remember free comes. Jason: [14:43] Yeah Yeah by 8 to 10 for a long time yeah. Scot: [14:46] Yeah I'm sure they've increased that but still they don't they don't have 287 I'll Hazard to guess. Marc: [14:52] Northern the third scruffy but what Mark's been doing is they've been retrofitting many of their existing facilities to play a partial removal for e-commerce. Jason: [15:02] I think that's why it's tricky to count because they have a pretty robust store infrastructure infrastructure for Distributing the stores and increasingly they're repurposing a portion of those. Scot: [15:16] And then how about sortation centers that's a little tricky because some of them are attached to fulfillment centers right or do you keep track. Marc: [15:22] Now we track those step we track those those are clean they've got 96 active sortation centers that's an area of the business has really grown in the last 12 months and then 22 on the way instruction. Scot: [15:36] Wow that is big Cecil get 20% growth and then how about delivery stations. Marc: [15:44] So two flavors of the delivery station one is the small package delivery station which is what most of us, think you know think of them get an Amazon box and then there's also the heavy bulky. Where you know they have a box truck with a license truck driver maybe two people are needed to unload the coach or whatever moves you whatever it is it's big and heavy that you ordered and so it's 515 delivery stations are active. And 113 of the heavy bulky ones and we're aware of another roughly about 161 buildings that are in the works right now. Scot: [16:21] Yeah and now that's that's probably the newest part of this right because they used to from sortation they would dump it mostly before they had the DSP program they would dump all that into USPS FedEx and UPS and then that delivery station is that lacks mile where they've built and if you're saying there's 5 15 plus 113 plus 1 so there's like 700 or 800 of these those are mostly in like the last five years is that is that your recollection. Marc: [16:48] Well I ran 2014 we got started on the first couple and it was so hard for the first few years but this is the part of the business just skyrocketed you know for the last 34 years, they've been building these out not only in the cities what's interesting is last year they opened up 30 of these in the tiniest of towns. No population 5000 kind of thing and short It's seems to me they're trying to get an ecologist The Wagon Wheel they're trying to get into the rural, areas to do this work as well which tells me, did you know that lost 50% of the population where it's really tiny towns that's the most expensive part of the country to get to you know lust population density widest geography so it's the most expensive last mile delivery you can possibly make. But the fact that they're starting out with this lab test to say hey let's try these 30 a talisman, their goal is to have every one of these zip codes under their control including all of the rural ones so this is an interesting story that's unfolding. Scot: [17:53] Yeah and then the thing that's kind of a if your UPS what's tricky about this is you were in FedEx you were delivering all this stuff for them and then I imagine you know the Amazon robot in the sky the a I basically said that's a profit or out for us we'll take that over this is a prophet I can just kind of picture them like snipping the tree and then adding these delivery stations and just slowly but surely and conversely someone on the FedEx UPS side watching that all that margin go away is that kind of how you envisioned they rolled this out. Marc: [18:26] I think it's a lot simpler than the AI in the sky you know I think it's just sort the US population in descending sequence right. Scot: [18:34] Yeah okay. Marc: [18:35] Start out with New York La Chicago and so on and working way down the list until you conquered all the big cities and then keep going down from there and and. Scot: [18:43] That's not as ominous as an AI in the sky the. Marc: [18:45] Yeah it sounds better. That's really the way it works is they and it instantly for the Fulfillment center build out you know right now they're targeting towns in that four to five hundred thousand population range, I like Green Bay Wisconsin that kind of thing and you know the that's on the list of places they're going and it's because they've already done the ones that are 600,000. Scot: [19:10] Let's um so two of my favorite areas of the infrastructure to kind of poke around and is the Fulfillment centers and you know so I think the average in your data is something like 800,000 to a million and maybe that's maybe that's the small sort of bulls but, it's hard for people to imagine a building like that until you're inside of one and you know the one way I've helped people to try and understand it as it's like 22 to the 30 Walmart's just kind of stacked in the cubic volume of that many Walmarts you get inside one of these things and you can't really see the you might as well be on the moon because you can't really see the Horizon per se because it's just like it's so stack the stuff you don't really know where you are in the if you weren't familiar with it you're not really no sure where you are how do they and then Amazon is pretty unique in the ones that aren't robotic with how they put product up is my understanding what what what system do they use for that or do you know. Marc: [20:05] So you're talking about like the large no shuttle facilities where they are more manual. Scot: [20:09] Or yeah we're there more manual. Marc: [20:12] Yeah that is actually equipment being used for that is nothing special that's pretty common place it's called an order picker truck and an order picker truck is a vehicle that runs on a wire guidance that's buried in the floor. So that it doesn't go left to right it stays true to the wire and an operator goes up with the unit load rather than staying at ground level and raising a bow. The operator rise to the bull head of the 40 foot building takes the boxed off the pallet and then inserts it into the location in Iraq so it's called a man up system. That's fairly common in most walks of life that's not something you need Amazon. Scot: [20:52] Yeah and then don't they do it where the stuff they put on the shelves by shelf height they found it was kind of randomly placed on shelves by. Marc: [20:59] They use random stoics that's great and I think when you're trying to manage you know one of those large amounts sort of a building's could easily have two million items, and one of the small suitable for mysterious could easily have $15 I say items I don't mean units of inventory I mean unique SKU variety and, even when you're dealing with that are sort meant that that's that's also coming and going you know it's not like there's one new item a day, or we it's like there's thousands of new items every single day hitting you it would be, an exercise in futility to try to organize it all in some meaningful way so that the fastest-moving Needham's are positioned strategically in the building and so forth that's the way most Warehouse is try to operate whether, this is an item that generates a lot of excitement let's put it in a in an efficient place in the world of Amazon, especially in the world where robots are retrieving the product and bringing the product to the Picker it doesn't really make sense to do that so they use random stowage and it works well for them. Scot: [22:04] Yeah and then so they acquired Kiva that's been quite a while now where where are they on the Kiva robot system as it relates to fulfillment centers. Marc: [22:14] I have to tell you a true story here I was at a trade show and they bought tear and I had chest, it's done a huge interview and a big article and Kevo with the prior owners and I said to them you know this is a great system but it would never work for Amazon. And they said the continent is said hey could you strike that from the article please, I have no clue the next day they announced that they were acquired by Amazon and I thought what a what a boy Amazon overspent they spent 750 million I said, all laughing at the trade show how much money Amazon spent on TiVo you know we thought they were fools at that we were wrong, was I wrong you know I've never been so wrong the whole life that that's been a huge win for Amazon and to my knowledge there's about three hundred and fifty thousand of these Roomba star robots running around out there across the world, and we've done the reverse engineering on their labor chewing we've put a lot of Manpower and we try to figure out. What would it what would their roles look like today. If they hadn't done this if they were continuing to operate with pushcarts people walking 12 miles a day to pick these orders that kind of thing and the math we keep coming up with is she not to push out five million units a week. [23:36] Out of a small sort of a fulfillment center you need about three thousand people, if it's got robotics same building no robotics you need about 4,800 people. So the cost per unit when you look at all the labor cost in in the manual building it's about 95 cents a unit. In the automated building it's about 60 cents a unit so it's it's been about a 37% labor reduction they have a cost reduction for them. Now I was on doesn't like talking about that they like to say well actually in our automated buildings we sometimes have more people than in our manual abilities, but what they don't mention is that they're pushing out way more volume. With those extra people that they've got in Atlanta so they're at the end of the day you can't look at it that way you have to look at it is. If the volume is constant how many people would I need manual versus automated and in our opinion they're saving about 37 percent of their love the labor requirements by putting this Automation and that's why they've been, I showed in every single building that they put up in the US and and in the developed world because of the huge labor cost savings. Scot: [24:48] Very cool I had not heard that step the, so then the other one I think is really interesting is these delivery stations and some of the materials you have you have a kind of a really cool picture for how this is maybe a maybe try to walk people through kind of like how this is set up and what it does on a day-to-day basis. Marc: [25:11] Yeah I think there's a misconception sometimes that are delivering station yeah in the media they sometimes come to the room stations fulfillment centers and they get it mixed up delivery station is purely. A secondary sortation Center the first sort took place back at this rotation Center we're all the packages for a 200-mile region, were organized by ZIP code and then for a specific area within that 200-mile region that's very very tight. Call it an area where the driver can leave the delivery station and go no further than 60 Minutes of drive time to get to the market that he's making deliveries. [25:53] That's small ships unit circle, it's what's being serviced by the delivery station in there could be many of those circles within the region that the sortation center serves so this is the secondary sort and all those packages arrive at the delivery station that they got downloaded to a conveyor system, people sort those packages out, to route and a route is quite simply a grouping of streets that are close together in a neighborhood, so that a driver goes into that neighborhood will be as efficient as possible when making that last mile delivery and a delivery station you know in the old days they used to put on so that the Vans would drive through the building, and the loading process would take place in the building and that is still done in Northern climates like Chicago like where I live, because you can't effectively load of an out when it's snowing outside and so forth but a lot of the newer ones that they've got. [26:50] You could easily have anywhere from 250 to 750 Vans pulling up to the side of the building underneath an extended canopy outside, and they're getting loaded out very much in military discipline stock so you'll have a platoon of 72 Vans pulling up, in 20 minutes later they've got, all their packages for their roads and they're leaving in the next platoon of 72 is pulling in 20 minutes later they're gone the next platoon and so on and over the course of two and a half hours, three hours you Amazon's loaded out upwards of five 600 fans and they're out there on the streets doing those deliveries and it's not unusual for a bad people, quiet day with operative 175 packages or more on a busy day with upwards of 250 packages or more. [27:42] And these drivers are going over a 10-hour day and when you do the math on the time it takes for them, between deliveries some of these guys are average me three minutes per delivery. Which is astounding because these numbers no one else is hitting them this is unique to Amazon they've got enough density, and demand for their product and the service that they can go out there and every three minutes make a package delivery it's a, it's incredible how much volume they've got we think that in the US last year in 2021 the came close to six billion packages delivered through the Amazon Logistics, delivery Station Network which is incredible because when you look at that volume you compare it to seeing UPS or FedEx, UPS is our is 120 Euro a hundred three hundred fourteen year old business and they're achieving about that same volume as we speak so they've been able to build since 2014. Company a transportation company that they're on themselves that is basically doing the same volume as a hundred fourteen year old UPS. So I find that and that's over and above everything else they've done whether it's at this is just history in the making. Scot: [28:57] Yeah it's pretty amazing when they when they go to fill one of the Vans is it prepackaged like on a pallet and they just left a pallet in there or like a swarm of people are dumping packages in there. Marc: [29:08] No actually it's pretty smart what they do they. Each time a package is removed from the conveyor belt on the inbound it's being scanned into a canvas bag, the canvas bag think of it as kind of like a hockey bag almost, where you're putting a group of boxes that logically and should be together because they're close in terms of proximity as to where they need to be delivered so they doctor soil 225 packages on into the back of the van Loosely they organize it by these bags, and the operator who the driver has to make these deliveries is told what bag to go to in order to retrieve a specific, parcel that has to be delivered so it takes a problem of say 250, boxes and breaks it down into smaller subsets to make it faster for the driver to find the actual package. Scot: [30:01] So then how many canvas bags are on is it like 25 or something. Marc: [30:07] You know I don't know that's a good question that I've never been able to figure out. Scot: [30:11] I stumped you. Marc: [30:12] You stopped me. Scot: [30:14] It took awhile, yeah it's just fascinating to watch these deliver and then the thing that Amazon does is so they'll have one of these delivery stations and let's say you know to your point they'll Maybe hundreds of ants may be up to 1,000 bands that service one of these and then there's different dsps running these things and they put them in competition with each other over routes maybe say a little bit more about I don't think a lot of people realize that's going on so maybe maybe explain how that works. Marc: [30:43] Yeah so you know when you when you look at UPS unit FedEx and the other large carriers out there they all have employees. They sometimes have to deal with units transportation to heavily you know it's sector of the economy so how do you build a transportation business that's non-union. How do you build a transportation business where, no one has the ability to organize and come after you and go on strike and start causing problems for your business and how do you keep costs down, well Amazon her everything about everything you really have to respect about this company and they've done it differently. And I got thousands of stories that kind I can talk to that, you know will describe how they just don't think the same as the rest of the world they say they don't allow themselves to be stopped by existing paradigms so what they said was. [31:40] Last of all and help entrepreneurs get started. [31:45] Ruth help them get the Vans will help them Finance the whole process of getting into business, and the other load and higher the employees who will do the deliveries so they're that creates an arm's-length agreement between the driver and, Amazon it doesn't become their HR problem becomes the HR problem that DS p-- and let's make sure that every one of these delivery stations is not being serviced by 1 DS p-- no no no, we have to have that with 356 sometimes 90 a speech why because, yes p number one starts rattling assume that he's not making enough money, or he doesn't provide adequate service or something bad happens with one of the drivers or you know you can think of a Litany of other reason you fire them, and you bring in another bsp to replace them so they're all powerless, and they're all captive to Amazon so it kind of reminds me of the old family days when you know if you went off and sold Emily product at, and even space is my captive rate what could you do about nothing, in this case Amazon control is everything these dsps cannot go do deliveries for other people they're captive to Amazon Amazon own SEC passing, and the dsps have to deal with all the churn and burn that was on a high turnover labor environment that they're dealing with. [33:10] And I've got to perform because Amazon is monitoring them every step of the way there's cameras on these vehicles they can tell whether or not the vehicle is doing what it's supposed to be doing or if the driver is doing something wrong. [33:22] And they have to perform and if they don't perform them there let go so it's a way of keeping, this massive network of thousands and thousands of drivers without the ability to organize and form a union without the ability to, gain any power and yet they can guarantee fast you'll be there for them when we need it so it's brilliant it's a stroke of Genius. Scot: [33:46] They're not franchise right there their 1099 so the kind of like how FedEx set up ground is my understanding is that is it. Marc: [33:54] There are there people that often times used to work for Amazon in the warehouse. And then they took hold of this opportunity and said hey why not give this a try and they became entrepreneurs and now these business people. Are out there having to manage sometimes 30 40 50 drivers are more and everyday they're under pressure to get this job done. Show. Do I think at the end of the day Kudos Amazon for figuring out how to do this and not be saddled with labor costs that are prices high right some of these drivers, turn twenty to twenty-five dollars an hour you start looking at the wage rates fully loaded that a FedEx or UPS driver is making and, sometimes those folks are out there making 70 thousand dollars a year to drive a vehicle, number two new drivers when it's foot when you consider the benefits so that's what happens when you have employees and you know you treat them right and you have benefits everything else Amazon is gone, hello cost way to db2 see and keep their costume we think the average delivery is coming in somewhere around a dollar 75. And that's pretty hard to match you know when you start looking at the others. Scot: [35:14] Yeah what what would you say FedEx and UPS around. Marc: [35:18] It's hard to sort of cost structure is but if you you know you all you have to do is go there and say Hey I want you to shoot this package and it's still going to be 67 dollars, a portion of that 67 dollars goes towards the last mile delivery function but a pretty big portion. Jason: [35:35] So Mark I talk to other people that have kind of a simple model in their mind of how this works that way, you know gosh Amazon puts one of everything in a huge fulfillment center and puts the Fulfillment centers close to people but I think the problem Amazon solves is even much more complicated than most people realize did I hear you right a big Amazon fulfillment center holds about 15 million skus is that order of magnitude right. Marc: [36:04] That's all that's not a bad number. Jason: [36:06] And then how many skus do you think Amazon sells I have seen a number of numbers I thought I heard you say 360 million but I've seen some estimates that are even quite a bit north of that. Marc: [36:17] And to confess I only know what I read as far as that goes so the number that I saw last was somewhere around 316 million or so. Jason: [36:27] Okay so let's see. Scot: [36:28] That's her prime eligible I think I think that's Prime eligible and then non-prime eligible ev's another 300 million yeah I think I think that's where the bigger number is Jason. Jason: [36:36] That would totally make sense so to kind of frame this it's it's not like you place an order and everything can get shipped from the Fulfillment center that's closest to you right like the, you know they're strategically staging different long tail inventory all over this network and then you know. Impressively maintaining this high level high service level even when that product is in close and that's where a lot of those like are exceptions that you and Scott talked about in the beginning come in right is. Marc: [37:07] Write that obscure Halloween costume you're buying for your daughter right. That is only stocked in the Seattle fulfillment center and you're in New York he wanted two days so that's an example of something that would go by plane if your Amazon Prime. Jason: [37:24] Yeah and the. You mentioned so one funny thing so I live in a multi-unit apartment building a 12 unit Condo building and I like to think of us as an Amazon laboratory because we're in Chicago Chicago has every kind of fulfillment infrastructure here and and are 12 units get about 50 Amazon Parcels a day and it every single day in our mailroom there are Amazon labeled boxes delivered by the postal carrier there are tons of Amazon boxes delivered by Amazon you know dress dsps and their their Amazon boxes delivered by UPS is, is in your mind is that because people are ordering longtail items and they're having to use all these other delivery vehicles or are some of those boxes because, their vendor fulfilled inventory or you know things like that. Marc: [38:22] You know people ask me this kinds of questions I don't know all of the inner workings of how things function but I can only surmise so, there is a significant amount of merchandise that's sold on the Amazon platform that's been fulfilled. So if it comes in an Amazon box then it's probably Amazon Fulfillment right and if it's arriving by the post office and your, area where you live is being service primarily by Amazon Logistics drivers. Chances are it's coming the ship from location is such that it will ship by another former Senators far away. Where for whatever reason the post office was used and maybe that customer that ordered that box was not Amazon Prime so they ship it from a farming fulfillment center, and it arrived 345 days later and that was the lowest cost way of getting it there. Right and something for UPS center maybe it's coming from a location where UPS provides the best value to get it to the customer address and remember not everybody's Amazon Prime so the rush to get it, in two days is really an Amazon Prime only issue right. Jason: [39:42] Wait there people in the world that don't have Amazon Prime and I'm teasing so so now I do want to Pivot a little bit as if this kind of logistics wasn't difficult enough now there's all this demand for what to me seems like even more difficult distribution which is like all these perishable locally sourced by grocery case. Marc: [40:06] Yeah. Jason: [40:07] And what when you use it off all the various types of fulfillment centers in the beginning one thing we didn't talk about that my understanding is that like Amazon is likely also starting to build a lot of are these smaller fresh distribution centers that are you know located closer to customers you know with various degrees of same day service. Marc: [40:33] Yes of the you know Amazon's been very slow to step up to the plate for the food side of the business right so what they did initially was they opened up these Prime now hubs, many of which had fresh capability fresh or frozen so these are smaller type of operations that are interested in. My mom wanted to small running with 25,000 square feet type thing. And they would be there real life was to you know pick your order for food and have it delivered to your house and say two hours. And it was never a money-making side of the business because primarily everything that's going on here is manual so when they acquired Whole Foods. And you know they said well here's always starts right we've got those 500 stores let's leverage them as being miniature Depot's that we can depart and do home delivery. [41:33] And that's really been I think the focus over the last few years is how to get as many of those more food stores delivering your grocery orders as possible and fairly recently they did away with the free delivery, our whole foods and we put up to ten dollars. And that's the show I might add even if your Amazon Prime because it does cost a huge amount of money to do a delivery of food might say why. Well food is the type of merchandise that you can't systematically. Synergize and build-up Innovation for a day's worth of work when someone orders their food. Usually what ends up happening at least in the case of Amazon is the delivery function is made in an unrefrigerated vehicle like a car. You know I flexible driver and wait take several orders that I'm going to deliver them and that delivery function is usually within 15 to 30 minutes of the store. [42:38] Because you don't want your chicken breasts sitting in the tropical car for 4 hours or you're a scream or anything else that could cause a food safety issue. So that type of service when you're paying somebody 25 to 40 dollars to deliver a handful of borders that are food. So often times it ends up costing seven to eleven dollars to perform one delivery. And in the world of food it's a two percent net margin so you can lose your shirt quickly when you start paying for that and not charging a customer. [43:09] Amazon is still trying to figure it out and I believe what they've decided on and so the strategy here is that they will. Very gradually start building out the Amazon Fresh stores that don't require check out our cashier. [43:27] Rotisserie snout that they're working on those. And as they build up more of those stores and they get more volume to layer on top of the Whole Foods Network. I believe that Amazon will start to develop their own supply chain capabilities behind the scenes meaning. Highly automated distribution centers strategically positioned in at least seven major markets that will feed the stores. [43:55] Giving Amazon the ability to buy efficiently and to distribute efficiently. And how we do the automation will be applied to minimize the labor cost in these buildings and then we'll over the next decade. Below are very robust supply chain that's similar to what Amazon are sorry Walmart big during the 1990s. Walmart went to town they put 46 million square feet of distribution center space up in the span of a decade. And they built out all those super centers with food capability during that same decade. During that same decade Walmart put over 25 companies of business that we're long you know long-standing Regional grocery retailers. It's so the next big wave or the next tsunami of competition in the food industry will be Amazon. Are they doing it now no they're just getting started we haven't seen very much activity here I think they've really pushed this one off and they've formed a strategic Partnerships with UNFI and what's Spartan Nash but, I said come 20/20 special reference start to see a lot more activity here. Jason: [45:08] Yeah it's a it's a big chunk of consumer spending I get its lower margin and more difficult but eventually it seems like it will it'll be the place to invest I am curious though do you like I often talk about, by God this general merchandise as being like deliverable via a route and a lot of this perishable merchandise, at least at the moment people feel like you have to do point to point deliveries because you got to get the ice cream, to the homeowner when the homeowner can put it in the in the freezer pretty promptly. Marc: [45:40] Yeah and the other the other thing is the homeowner wants to know when you're coming so there's a specific delivery time window. Jason: [45:47] Exactly and and pre-pandemic all these two income households there are very you know the there was, a scarcity of squats win-win homeowners were available and it was the same slot for everyone right so it became so it's really hard some of the people some of Amazon's competitors are experimenting with these novel, you know very small things but like hey let's put refrigerators on customers porches and will deliver you to the refrigerators or let's get smart locks and you know deliver to the consumers home refrigerator like. I don't know do you you imagine the Amazon is going to have to come up with some novel solution. Marc: [46:30] No no don't forget there's all kinds of spaghetti get in front of the wall and half of it's not sticking right if so I like the idea where I'm going to let some stranger into my house to put food in my fridge, um that's not lawsuit written all over it I can't imagine that's going to last very long. Walmart's doing it and they're expanding it actually but you know I'm going to predict that once a dead duck. When you get down to brass tacks we work with quite a few retailers in the grocery sector depending on the geography we're talking about. Some of these retailers have 90% order of the orders that are ordered online or pickup at store. So some will place an order at 10:00 11:00 at night and arrange to pick it up at 5:00 the next day after the work is over. And the like that convenience because they don't have to go in the store and waste their time and it's on the way home it's from their local story anyway. [47:30] And when you think about it 90% pick up at store 10% deliver that's exactly what a grocery retailer wants because that eleven dollar delivery to the house was the way that cost goes away. Customer likes it because they don't have to spend the money on that bus too. Start looking at the cost of instacart and what it cost for a valet to go shop you ordered and delivered to your house and after you look at the markups that are put on the product that no one really knows about because they're not looking at the fine print. After you pay for the delivery fee the tip etcetera it's not uncommon that 100 all orders now 125 to 130 dollars coming out of your pocket as you want to the store would have been 100. [48:12] And that business model will be what comes Under Fire as more and more people tune into that cost increase. Amazon's proposition on the home delivery side will with the increase of these Amazon Fresh stores and the Whole Food stores I think they're going to try to go, to the pickup at store model as well more storage more opportunity for that less expense. And also try to get more efficient with scale at doing the home delivery model right because it requires scale. Really touch and if you really want to do it right you won't with refrigerated trucks that's what Kroger's doing so now you can send a driver out for a day's worth of work with a refrigerated truck, with appointment schedules and all that done and then and now you've got you know a uniform driver and a logo on the outside of the vehicle and it's far more professional than you know some Flex driver showing up at your front door. [49:08] There's lots of things going on as you can people play with the proboscis down the sidewalk to do the to do the delivery of the order, wait for a New York is doing that and we'll see whether or not any of these things and you know I've always been about Bethel that a single robot that might possibly thousand dollars. Is is a good way to spend your money to go and deliver one order 9f you doing 10,000 orders a day when I need 10,000 of these robots have been waived spend capital. Probably not so I and that's why drums never took off I am 137 million packages a year, with drones you just can't right here you're going to need billions of drones to make that happen it's just it's not realistic. Scot: [49:53] Yeah, let's pivot a little bit so let's talk a little bit about kind of the future so you've given us your really good good lay of the land of and even some future that they're you know they're there, increasingly investing in these things one of the things I've kind of long predicted you mentioned the last mile is maybe like a buck and change to deliver something do you think Amazon will eventually just compete with that axe UPS where I'll just throw some packages on my door like let's say I'm going to ship, Jason a new microphone I'll just put it on my front porch address it to Jason and when the Amazon comes they'll pick that up and take it to him for three dollars or something. Marc: [50:32] The question I get quite often asked quite often and I always start out by explaining you know Amazon is a business that there are days during Q4 were they on the hill quite a few days, in the fourth quarter the volume this ship relative to an average day is 2X. [50:54] So like a fulfillment center that there's a half a million units on an average day is spent a million units output on a busy day. Repeat it and the same thing goes for the delivery stations right you might have a delivery station doing fifty thousand packages now doing a hundred thousand on a peak day, so during the first quarter of the whole company stressed. With trying to get all these resources to work longer hours huge amounts of overtime and everybody's tired and there isn't any fat in the system, to be able to take on additional nice to have volume to try to subsidize your business. Your just got every pair of boots on the ground trying to manage your own customers and your own needs. Sorry you set something up where Logistics is a service during q1 through Q3 when you have a lot of slack in the system by frankly. Matthew 4 well one way you could do that is on your 3p Partners you could extend an offering to them and say hello, your only business partners will do your deliveries for you during q1 323 but not during Q4 and if they're small Mom & pops and they're going to get a significant cost break because of that, don't jump on board and now you've got that additional volume that you need during she wants review 3, to help Finance or subsidize your own Logistics operations and indeed that opportunity is readily available today and I think that's the first Port of Call. [52:22] 24 on the other hand they might just turn that tap off and say we don't need the revenue and what really needs every boot on the ground to support our own business. [52:30] If you're a serious ship and by that I mean spend five to ten million dollars a year on parcel free. What happens is the people like FedEx and UPS first thing in the new you they come into your place and they say look what your business, you gave us a commitment for the 10 million in volume and we'll take the whole thing and we'll give you a nice juicy discount. So it's not something that you can carve up by quarter. Commit at the beginning of the year to doing 10 million shipping volume may give you an extra Cent discount in exchange for that, and you stay the whole year with that one partner so this Logistics as a service concept is is, really something that you have to be careful with because it's a bad idea for the first three quarters but not the last one and it's not like AWS which is a commodity that you can sell to everybody. It's something that requires lots of lots of vehicles delivery stations for patients centers drivers There's real resources that are needed to make this happen. And you can't put a peak on top of a peak because that 24 Peak that's happening in the Amazon is happening everywhere else in the b2c world as well. [53:40] So I think they'll become a competitor to FedEx and UPS and I think I'll primarily compete in the b2c spaced delivering consumers because that's what they're good at they're not trying to do, the deliveries that you know it's 50 packages a delivery at a business and I'm trying to be that work that's still going to be the domain of UPS and FedEx but I see this competition really being something that, we'll probably wind down towards that fourth quarter of the year. Scot: [54:08] Finishing yeah the so we've seen an enormous amount of venture investing and go puff and what are these companies called Jason there's some cool name that you you guys use. Jason: [54:20] Like ultra-fast delivery. Scot: [54:21] Fast delivery do you yeah the gorilla and all those guys do you feel like you're going to have a better system than Amazon or do you think that they're foolishly going to crash into the Rocks the Amazon rocks. Marc: [54:35] Yeah I think I think that's what's going to happen I think all of those especially the 15 minute guys I think they're all going to burn out and I Venture Capital money is going their way of course but. You know anything to do with food requires volume, and stale and you're not going to make money and find resources that are going to. Stick around for the long run in this big worker economy of 15-minute deliveries when you're constantly under stress that that's just a recipe for disaster I wouldn't put a name on to that myself, um the good parts of the world will see I'll hold off on that when they've got 500 of these fulfillment centers that call but their time kiosks really at the end of the day and, you know it's a huge cost model to operate that way and I honestly think, um you know this is all exciting and new but when the expectation to make a profit starts to become a reality I think a lot of these guys are going to go away. Scot: [55:39] Yeah this is kind of a correlated question we're so you talked about you know some of the Amazon numbers you are putting out there you know you said they're going to add, you know, 122 sorts and more another 161 delivery stations where does this stop and you meant also mention the Wagon Wheel where they're actually starting to get out into pretty Loosely populated areas is is there a point in time where, we're done like and when is it. Marc: [56:09] Well here's an interesting sound bite for you know when we add up all the square feet that Amazon added in the u.s. 2021 including the message. Crossover in fact it came to about a hundred and thirty six point six million square feet okay keep in mind the entire Walmart Network that took 49 years to build. Totals up to about 150 million so we're talking about company during covid conditions when it's impossible to get lead times that are decent and suppliers to do the work on society Etc, this guy's built almost almost an entire Amazon just in the u.s.a. sorry and I'm tired of Walmart just in the u.s. in one ear, and when you look at what there. On schedule to build in 2022 148 million more square feet will be added in 2022 and that's the size of the Walmart Network that's been built over the last 50 years. So this thing isn't going to slow down anytime soon even though in the last quarter they announced that they're going to take a breather. Now you know when you hear that what that means is the number of new facility announcements that we would normally expect. [57:27] To happen this time of year is down way down compared to last year. So that means 2023 2024 I would fully expect this speak to start really slowing down. At least on fulfillment center side. The logistic side they've probably got another 750 to 800 buildings to put up between now and the next five years in order to hit true Coast-to-Coast coverage across all zip codes, they may change direction to say about to do that but if they do decide to do that, there's a good 800 more buildings they have put up that are Derby station since rotation centres and are hubs in the lake and that's not have to have an output of energy and but I would see within the next five years, we should expect. [58:22] That this engine will start to mature and it's quite the growth of warehouse space, for Amazon is directly correlated to the product sales growth that you see on their quarterly statements, so if sales go up by ten percent they're going to need 10% more space at least from fulfillment center perspective all of the logistics buildings are more geographically driven. So the question is your how much more will e-commerce grow. Over the next five years relative to what we know today that's a hard one to answer that I see that, in the u.s. you know our expectation is 10 percent growth this year in 2022 slowing down probably eight six and four percent over the next several years so I think the growth in just e-commerce in general. Combined with this mature Network that they've already got combined with the fact that I mean you can only build so many of these anyway. It doesn't make sense to put up a 300 million dollar building a town of 200,000 probably not. Now it's better to ship the product further than to spend all that capex and on a small town or small in time so these things lead me to believe that we're going to spoke we're hitting the top of the bell curve and we're heading down the other side. Jason: [59:42] Marc this has been great this does kind of trigger one last question that I maybe should have started with so you kind of have in a different field but the same job I have I jokingly tell people my job is to unsuccessfully helped other retailers compete with Amazon and yeah you've just painted like a pretty impressive picture of, like how daunting the the Advantage Amazon has and how far ahead of everyone they are you mentioned you work with a lot of other retailers like, at the highest level I assume it can't be your advice to anyone that they should try to catch up right like is the is the answer to like find some white space that's an alternative approach to brute-forcing this like what what do you tell other retailers that engage you. Marc: [1:00:33] No one needs me to tell them that they can't compete against Amazon me this is history in the making right we've never seen anything like this in modern in the history of modern man this speed the sheer speed at which this has happened. I can remember going to trade shows not that long ago when people said yeah but they'll ever make any money, and you know pooh-poohing Amazon is slow they're going to be extinct in real time and you know what's happened since the mid-90s till today in a relatively short period of time has been devastating. [1:01:09] To the retail industry to shopping lost every aspect of retail you can possibly imagine. And it's going to continue to happen and sir you can't say to a company, wow and become better at e-commerce than Amazon is because that's a losing battle I think you just have to understand when Back to Basics you know what made you great in the first place, don't try to become a five hour delivery firm. Because you're not going to get there without huge cock question and it kind of brings us to Shopify and how much money will Shopify end up spending. In order to get the two-day next and all the rest of it well I think determine the two days but they absolutely need to be competitive, mom you know go and build you are six or eight fulfillment centers however many that's going to end up being one put those in place either with a third-party Logistics partner through your own resources, and stop and stop it today because there's no point in trying to be next day, that just gets way too expensive and then focus on the core values right wider Shopify, exists with a high degree of success and growth it's because they offer something that Amazon doesn't offer right then it has nothing to do with its owner has everything to do with the vendor. [1:02:29] And same thing with wafer you know a lot of folks asking what about wafer wafer has a fantastic product offering. Right I mean they the customer shop on the wafer safe for the products that are sold there not because Wayfair can deliver within the same day. So don't even try to become an Amazon trying to be the best you can with the resources you have but you know focus on what makes you great first place. Jason: [1:02:56] Well Mark that is great advice and that is going to be a great place to leave it because it's happened again we've used up all of our listeners a lot of time but this was an amazing conversation really appreciate your time if listeners enjoyed this show we sure would appreciate it if you jump on iTunes and give us that five-star review. Scot: [1:03:16] Marc Lee really appreciate you taking time to share your deep knowledge of Amazon's infrastructure if folks are interested in reaching out to you maybe maybe you've piqued their interest to help them figure out some stuff what's the best way for them to reach you or read what you write online. Marc: [1:03:35] Our website wpbf.com. Scot: [1:03:38] Awesome well thanks everyone and. Jason: [1:03:42] Until next time happy commercing.

Amazon geht mit Amazon Global Logistics (AGL) ins Speditionsgeschäft. Sollte man 30 Jahre lang in den selben ETF einzahlen? Welche Uhr sollte man tragen? Was ist bei Delivery Hero los? Earnings: Disney, Twilio, Affirm, Hubspot, Cloudflare und Twitter. Philipp Glöckler (https://twitter.com/gloeckler) und Philipp Klöckner (https://twitter.com/pip_net) sprechen heute über: (00:01:46) Amazon Logistics (00:14:00) ETFs (00:22:30) Uhren Marken Talk (00:30:30) Delivery Hero (00:53:30) Disney (00:58:00) Twilio (01:07:00) Affirm (01:19:45) Hubspot (01:25:25) Cloudflare (01:32:30) Twitter Shownotes: Amazon vs. Uber - Wie zwei Riesen die Logistikbranche aufmischen (2017) https://trademachines.de/info/amazon-uber/ Matthew Prince retweeted Flappy Bird https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1492032002555461632 **Doppelgänger Tech Talk Podcast** Earnings & Event Kalender https://www.doppelgaenger.io/kalender/ Sheet https://doppelgaenger.io/sheet/ Disclaimer https://www.doppelgaenger.io/disclaimer/ Post Production by Jan Wagener https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-wagener-49270018b Sponsoring: https://www.doppelgaenger.io/sponsoring/

Amazon sellers have seen some big trends over the last couple of years. In addition to the growth of the size of ecommerce markets, there has been an explosion in the value of ecommerce businesses, and specifically  brands with a focus on Amazon FBA, especially private label or custom product brands.  Amazon Aggregators are now a key type of FBA business buyer . They have from a theoretical concept to huge players (with massive funding) within under 3 years. But what are the underlying factors behind this rise? What is driving this explosive growth of eCommerce Aggregators? Who is funding them? And can the growth continue?  To answer that question we have two experts from the research division of Global Wired Advisors. With a background in Wall Street, they bring some investment rigour to analysing Amazon Aggregators. Together we explore what is going on with Aggregators, where they've come from and what might happen next in this exciting development.  In the end, the majority of all the cash you ever make on Amazon could end up being made by selling to an aggregator. That being the case, you need to understand who you're dealing with!   If you own an Amazon-focussed custom product or private label brand, it's time to really understand these increasingly well-funded and active Amazon players. Meet Our Guests : Global Wired Advisors' Managing Partner and Co-Founder is Joe Hogg. He is also the CEO and Founder of J.P. Morgan, as well as the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Providium Group LLC. Advisors of Ryland Capital. Joe was previously the Managing Director of Deutsche Bank's Structured Finance division and the Global Head of Funding for Wells Fargo Securities, a trading and investment banking branch of Wells Fargo. Global Wired Advisors' Head of Research is Robert Salmon. Robert was previously a Senior Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC and an Associate Analyst for Deutsche Bank Securities' automotive division. He has worked with a variety of transportation organizations, including Amazon Logistics, UPS, FedEx, the USPS and LTL trucking companies. In this episode you will learn: Understanding aggregator risk and return Moving capital into the space Aggregators : Roll Up Strategy “Economies of Scale” Spoke to an Aggregator - Are They Really Getting It? Highlighting Risk Factors to the Amazon aggregator business model Strategically how to mitigate against risk Insights on the Client base Amazon and DTC businesses The future of Aggregator Model

Amazon sellers have seen some big trends over the last couple of years. In addition to the growth of the size of ecommerce markets, there has been an explosion in the value of ecommerce businesses, and specifically  brands with a focus on Amazon FBA, especially private label or custom product brands.  Amazon Aggregators are now a key type of FBA business buyer . They have from a theoretical concept to huge players (with massive funding) within under 3 years. But what are the underlying factors behind this rise? What is driving this explosive growth of eCommerce Aggregators? Who is funding them? And can the growth continue?  To answer that question we have two experts from the research division of Global Wired Advisors. With a background in Wall Street, they bring some investment rigour to analysing Amazon Aggregators. Together we explore what is going on with Aggregators, where they've come from and what might happen next in this exciting development.  In the end, the majority of all the cash you ever make on Amazon could end up being made by selling to an aggregator. That being the case, you need to understand who you're dealing with!   If you own an Amazon-focussed custom product or private label brand, it's time to really understand these increasingly well-funded and active Amazon players. Meet Our Guests : Global Wired Advisors' Managing Partner and Co-Founder is Joe Hogg. He is also the CEO and Founder of J.P. Morgan, as well as the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Providium Group LLC. Advisors of Ryland Capital. Joe was previously the Managing Director of Deutsche Bank's Structured Finance division and the Global Head of Funding for Wells Fargo Securities, a trading and investment banking branch of Wells Fargo. Global Wired Advisors' Head of Research is Robert Salmon. Robert was previously a Senior Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC and an Associate Analyst for Deutsche Bank Securities' automotive division. He has worked with a variety of transportation organizations, including Amazon Logistics, UPS, FedEx, the USPS and LTL trucking companies. In this episode you will learn: Understanding aggregator risk and return Moving capital into the space Aggregators : Roll Up Strategy “Economies of Scale” Spoke to an Aggregator - Are They Really Getting It? Highlighting Risk Factors to the Amazon aggregator business model Strategically how to mitigate against risk Insights on the Client base Amazon and DTC businesses The future of Aggregator Model

In der heutigen Folge des BVL Podcasts geht es um das Amazon Delivery Service Partner Programm (DSP 2.0 Programm). In Folge #88 des BVL Podcasts hat Christian Langowski, Director DSP Management bei Amazon Logistics, das Delivery Service Partner Programm von Amazon bereits vorgestellt. In der heutigen Folge erzählt uns die Unternehmerin Alev Köksal, wie sie im Rahmen dieses Programms ihr eigenes Lieferunternehmen gegründet hat und mit der Unterstützung von Amazon erfolgreich betreibt. Als zweiten Gast haben wir Christian Köppeler (Business Development Manager bei Amazon) dabei, der uns erklärt, wie Amazon die Delivery Service Partner operativ unterstützt. Gemeinsam mit unserem Host Boris Felgendreher sprechen die beiden unter anderem über folgende Themen: - Alev's Background und was sie zum Amazon DSP Programm gebracht hat - Wie der Bewerbungsprozess für Alev ins Rollen kam - Was Alev im Alltag der Arbeit am besten gefällt - Wie das Team von Alev zusammengesetzt ist - Welche Fähigkeiten Unternehmer mitbringen müssen - Was bei der Bewerbung zu beachten ist - und vieles mehr Mehr Informationen über das Amazon Delivery Service Partner Programm: https://amzn.to/3owoeEe BVL Podcast Folge #88: https://bvl-digital.de/podcast/88-mit-amazon-ein-eigenes-lieferunternehmen-gruenden/ BVL.digital: https://bvl-digital.de/ BVL: https://www.bvl.de/

Amazon sellers have seen some big trends over the last couple of years. In addition to the growth of the size of ecommerce markets, there has been an explosion in the value of ecommerce businesses, and specifically  brands with a focus on Amazon FBA, especially private label or custom product brands.  Amazon Aggregators are now a key type of FBA business buyer . They have from a theoretical concept to huge players (with massive funding) within under 3 years. But what are the underlying factors behind this rise? What is driving this explosive growth of eCommerce Aggregators? Who is funding them? And can the growth continue?  To answer that question we have two experts from the research division of Global Wired Advisors. With a background in Wall Street, they bring some investment rigour to analysing Amazon Aggregators. Together we explore what is going on with Aggregators, where they've come from and what might happen next in this exciting development.  In the end, the majority of all the cash you ever make on Amazon could end up being made by selling to an aggregator. That being the case, you need to understand who you're dealing with!   If you own an Amazon-focussed custom product or private label brand, it's time to really understand these increasingly well-funded and active Amazon players. Meet Our Guests : Joe Hogg is the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Global Wired Advisors. He is also the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Providium Group LLC, and the CEO and Founder of J. Ryland Capital Advisors. Prior to these roles, Joe was the Global Head of Funding for Wells Fargo's trading and investment banking division, Wells Fargo Securities, and was the Managing Director of the Structured Finance division at Deutsche Bank. Robert Salmon is the Head of Research at Global Wired Advisors. Prior to working at the firm, Robert was the Senior Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC, and an Associate Analyst for an automotive team at Deutsche Bank Securities. He has experience analyzing transportation companies such as Amazon Logistics, UPS, FedEx, the USPS, trucking companies (TL and LTL), 3PLs, as well as the broader economy. In this episode you will learn: Who are GWA (Global Wired Advisors) and what do they do? What is an investment side? A brief background of Global Wired Advisors Building a Deal Screen Why have aggregators become such a big thing so fast? The big 3Ps of Amazon Generating interest and gathering investors to your business Applying CPG trad portfolio to determine the busines value

Amazon sellers have seen some big trends over the last couple of years. In addition to the growth of the size of ecommerce markets, there has been an explosion in the value of ecommerce businesses, and specifically  brands with a focus on Amazon FBA, especially private label or custom product brands.  Amazon Aggregators are now a key type of FBA business buyer . They have from a theoretical concept to huge players (with massive funding) within under 3 years. But what are the underlying factors behind this rise? What is driving this explosive growth of eCommerce Aggregators? Who is funding them? And can the growth continue?  To answer that question we have two experts from the research division of Global Wired Advisors. With a background in Wall Street, they bring some investment rigour to analysing Amazon Aggregators. Together we explore what is going on with Aggregators, where they've come from and what might happen next in this exciting development.  In the end, the majority of all the cash you ever make on Amazon could end up being made by selling to an aggregator. That being the case, you need to understand who you're dealing with!   If you own an Amazon-focussed custom product or private label brand, it's time to really understand these increasingly well-funded and active Amazon players. Meet Our Guests : Joe Hogg is the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Global Wired Advisors. He is also the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Providium Group LLC, and the CEO and Founder of J. Ryland Capital Advisors. Prior to these roles, Joe was the Global Head of Funding for Wells Fargo's trading and investment banking division, Wells Fargo Securities, and was the Managing Director of the Structured Finance division at Deutsche Bank. Robert Salmon is the Head of Research at Global Wired Advisors. Prior to working at the firm, Robert was the Senior Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC, and an Associate Analyst for an automotive team at Deutsche Bank Securities. He has experience analyzing transportation companies such as Amazon Logistics, UPS, FedEx, the USPS, trucking companies (TL and LTL), 3PLs, as well as the broader economy. In this episode you will learn: Who are GWA (Global Wired Advisors) and what do they do? What is an investment side? A brief background of Global Wired Advisors Building a Deal Screen Why have aggregators become such a big thing so fast? The big 3Ps of Amazon Generating interest and gathering investors to your business Applying CPG trad portfolio to determine the busines value

Joe Hogg is the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Global Wired Advisors. He is also the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Providium Group LLC, and the CEO and Founder of J. Ryland Capital Advisors. Prior to these roles, Joe was the Global Head of Funding for Wells Fargo's trading and investment banking division, Wells Fargo Securities, and was the Managing Director of the Structured Finance division at Deutsche Bank. Robert Salmon is the Head of Research at Global Wired Advisors. Prior to working at the firm, Robert was the Senior Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC, and an Associate Analyst for an automotive team at Deutsche Bank Securities. He has experience analyzing transportation companies such as Amazon Logistics, UPS, FedEx, the USPS, trucking companies (TL and LTL), 3PLs, as well as the broader economy. In this episode… Are you a brand owner looking to invest in the capital marketplace or an aggregator? What steps can your brand take to boost performance in the marketplace and appeal to a broader aggregator audience? Online sales growth has continued to rise, and the pandemic only accelerated this growth as consumers gravitate towards the convenience of delivered goods. Joe Hogg and Robert Salmon compiled a focus report to detail Amazon aggregators' risk and return features and their role in the acquisition, building value, and increasing interest in the brand space. They are here to share key insights with you. In this episode of Amazing Exits, Paul Miller is joined by Joe Hogg, Managing Partner and Co-founder of Global Wired Advisors, and Robert Salmon, Head of Research at Global Wired Advisors, to discuss how Amazon aggregators are shaping the digital consumer space. Together, they share how the number of aggregators in a space can increase value, how the pandemic accelerated growth in the capital marketplace, and how consolidation and capital reallocation lead to change. Stay tuned!

eicker.TV - Horizon Worlds, Decentraland, Amazon Logistics, TikTok, Emojis - Frisch aus dem Netz. Weiterführende Links und Zitate zu allen angesprochenen Themen finden sich immer via https://eicker.media und für diese Folge direkt unter: eicker.TV ist der Videokanal von Gerrit Eicker und eicker.digital zu Technews und Netzpolitik. Wir sprechen Online. Frisch aus dem Netz. Soziale Netzwerke und Kontakt: https://eicker.net/working #eickerTV #HorizonWorlds #Decentraland

This week, we cover Amazon's newest programs to help in logistics, a new segment that answers your questions, and Helium 10's new Amazon Anomaly Tracker

The real story about Supply chain disruptions from covid isn't just about toilet paper or cars. Dean Gene Kutcher sits down with current student Chahana Das '22 (Global Supply Chain Mgmt/Business Analytics), alum Jesse Ligouri '20 (Amazon Logistics) and faculty member Robert D'Avanzo (co-director Global Supply Chain Mgmt Program and retired Accenture executive) to discuss the today's headlines about covid-related supply chain disruptions

Heute u.a. mit folgenden Nachrichten: - Angebliche Milliarden-Zusage für Trumps neues soziales Netzwerk - Chinas Mobilitätsdienst Didi zieht sich von US-Börse zurück - "Love Is In The Air"-Gemälde von Banksy wird als Multi-NFT angeboten - Zoom muss Abonnenten entschädigen - Amazon Logistics sieht sich in den USA bereits als Nr. 1 - Elon Musk gibt Update zum Cybertruck - Entwürfe für neue Starship-Generation - Charlie Munger sieht Märkte derzeit verrückter als zu Dotcom-Zeiten - Senioren shoppen deutlich mehr im Internet - Gorillas erhöht Stundenlohn für seine Fahrerinnen und Fahrer Heute begrüßen wir im Rahmen der Reihe “Investment & Exits” Enrico Mellis, Principal bei Project A.

In der heutigen Folge des BVL.digital Podcasts geht es um die Chance mit Amazon ein eigenes Lieferunternehmen zu gründen. Amazon sucht nämlich gerade praxisorientierte Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, die Interesse haben eigene Servicepartner Teams aufzubauen. Amazon Delivery Service Partner Programm heisst das Ganze. Unser Host Boris Felgendreher hat sich Christian Langowski, Director DSP Management bei Amazon Logistics, in den Podcast geladen und gemeinsam über folgende Themen gesprochen: - Der Background von Christian Langowski. Seine bisherige Laufbahn und Stationen bei Amazon - Die Entwicklung von Amazon Logistics in Deutschland - Die Auslieferungskette bei Amazon - Was Amazon DSP2.0 ist und wie das Programm funktioniert - Für wen das Programm geeignet ist: Voraussetzungen, Erfahrungen, Qualifikationen - Wie eigentlich der ideale Partner tickt - Welche Vorteile und Chancen sich für die Partner ergeben - Wie der Technologiekonzern Amazon seine Lieferpartner unterstützt - Welche Rolle Nachhaltigkeit in der Logistik für Amazon im Zusammenhang mit diesem Programm spielt - Auf welche Technik Amazon für nachhaltige Logistik setzt - Einen Ausblick in die Zukunft des Programms - Wie Ihr Euch bewerben könnt. Link hier: https://bit.ly/3bS6gFB Und mehr Nützliche Links: Das Amazon Delivery Service Partner Programm: https://bit.ly/3bS6gFB BVL.digital: https://bvl-digital.de/ BVL: https://www.bvl.de/

A policy worker with the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice talks local global warming, labor violations at Amazon, and green logistics. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Statt Plaid nun halt Tink: Visa hat den Wert von Open Banking erkannt und wird nun im Zuge dessen das schwedische Fintech-Startup für 1,8 Milliarden Euro kaufen - sofern Wettbewerbsbehörden diesmal nicht einschreiten. Weitere Fintech-Schlagzeilen liefert Solarisbank, die nach einer großen Finanzierungsrunde nun vor dem Unicorn-Status stehen. Mit einem vielversprechenden Blick sieht man bei Raisin und Deposit Solutions in die Zukunft, denn mit einer Fusion wurden hier Kräfte gebündelt und Ambitionen für den US-Markt gestärkt. Zudem: Trade Republic mit neuen bedenklichen Optionen, der globale Investment Boom und die Ausläufer in Südkorea bei Viva Republica, verschwundene Bitcoin bei der Handelsplattform Africrypt, der Verkauf von Amazons Logistik-Bereich, die Partnerschaft von Flink und Rewe, Google und die Einführung einer neuen Gesundheitsapp, die gemeinsame Mediathek von ARD und ZDF sowie die Quartalszahlen von Nike nach dem chinesischen Embargo. --- Die Themen der Folge 125: --- • Visa kauft schwedisches Fintech-Startup Tink https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/24/visa-to-buy-swedish-fintech-start-up-tink.html https://www.creativeconstruction.de/blog/2021/06/28/webinar-embedded-finance-die-potenziale-von-fintech-fuer-nicht-banken/ • Solarisbank wird mit neuer Finanzierungsrunde zum Unicorn https://financefwd.com/de/solarisbank-unicorn-funding/ • Raisin und Deposit Solution fusionieren https://www.fintechfutures.com/2021/06/raisin-and-deposit-solutions-merge-to-create-pan-european-fintech-giant/ https://www.femalefuturefinance.creativeconstruction.de/podcast/12-die-zukunft-des-sparens-und-anlegens-mit-verena-thaler-vp-strategy-business-development-bei-raisin/ • Mehr Derivate und Real-Time-Einzahlungen bei Trade Republic https://assets.traderepublic.com/assets/files/Kundenvereinbarung.pdf https://www.creativeconstruction.de/blog/lp/trends-2021/enabling-financial-health/ • Viva Republica und der Trading-Boom in Südkorea https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/south-koreas-answer-to-robinhood-and-venmo-lands-a-7-billion-valuation-11624416070 • Krypto-Boom in Indien https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-28/even-gold-obsessed-indians-are-now-pouring-billions-into-crypto • Britische Finanzaufsicht geht gegen Kryptobörse Binance vor https://www.manager-magazin.de/finanzen/boerse/binance-britische-finanzaufsicht-fca-geht-gegen-boerse-fuer-kryptowaehrungen-vor-a-056c306f-721c-4a33-9ca7-820a6b2a89ed • Krypto-Handelsplattform Africrypt und verschwundene 2 Milliarden Dollar in Bitcoin https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-6-billion-bitcoin-disappears-060549648.html? • Amazon könnte zum Verkauf seines Logistikbereichs gezwungen werden https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-22/amazon-could-be-forced-to-sell-logistics-business-under-bill • Rewe wird Vertriebspartner von Schnelllieferdienst Flink https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/rewe-verbuendet-sich-mit-schnell-lieferdienst-flink-17372687.html • Leichtere Zulassung: Google bringt neue Health-App zuerst nach Europa https://www.wired.com/story/google-launches-medical-app-outside-us/ • ARD und ZDF starten Streaming-Offensive https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/ard-zdf-mediathek-101.html • China, Uiguren und Nike https://purpose.nike.com/statement-on-xinjiang https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57606588 • YouTube entfernt Videodokus über chinesischen Menschenrechtsverletzungen https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/27/22552714/youtube-google-took-down-videos-human-rights-abuses-china-xinjiang-uyghur • Mit Windows 11 ist der Internet Explorer Geschichte https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/25/22550714/microsoft-windows-11-internet-explorer-disabled --- » Die Buchempfehlung der Woche – von Sören: Colin Bryar, Bill Carr: „Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon“ --- » Weitere Infos, Kontakt und alle Podcasts: https://zurueckzurzukunft.creativeconstruction.de/ --- » Feedback, Anregungen und Wünsche an: podcast@zurueckzurzukunft.de

Wir fangen mit Fahmi Quadir und Doppelgänger Stickern an. Erklären warum wir letzte Folge nicht über Gorillas gesprochen haben. Wird es jetzt jeder Woche einen neuen deutschen SPAC geben? SPACs der Woche sind Tonies + 468 und Signa Sports. Kann Stripe auch Identity? Shopee macht Mercardo Libre in Chile und Kolumbien Konkurrenz. Wann kann Philipp ein Peloton für 1.000 € auf Kleinanzeigen kaufen? Amazon macht Cargo und blockt Google's FLoC. Zum Abschluss schaut Pip auf die aktuellen Zahlen von The Honest Company. Philipp Glöckler ([@gloeckler](https://twitter.com/gloeckler)) und Philipp Klöckner ([@pip_net](https://twitter.com/pip_net)) sprechen heute über: 00:10:00 AirBnb 00:15:00 Gorillas 00:34:00 Tonies Box 01:03:00 Okta, Stripe, Identity 01:06:30 Shopee Sea limited 01:11:00 Peloton & Fitness 01:16:44 Bitcoin 01:19:30 Signa Sports 01:30:30 Greenroom, Apple Podcast subscriptions 01:32:40 Klarna 01:36:00 Amazon Logistics, Google FLoC 01:45:00 Curevac 01:49:00 MR Spex, Honest Co **Doppelgänger Tech Talk Podcast** Disclaimer https://www.doppelgaenger.io/disclaimer/

EP264 - Retail Earnings, E-Commerce Quarterly Data  US Dept of Commerce Data April Sales – Flat vs. March 2021, up 41% vs. April 2020 (severely Covid impacted month). Many categories were wildly up, most notably Apparel which was up 727% vs the same month last year. Q1 E-Commerce – Up 7.7% vs Q4 2020, up 39.1% vs Q1 2020. Retail Q1 Earnings Walmart – US E-Commerce up 37% YoY, same-store sales saw up 6%  YoY Target – US E-Commerce up 50% YoY, same-store sales saw up 18%  YoY Macys – US E-Commerce up 34% YoY, same-store sales saw up 62.5%  YoY TJ Max – Same-store sales up 16%  YoY (E-Commerce not disclosed) Lowes – US E-Commerce up 36,5% YoY, same-store sales saw up 11.3%  YoY Home Depot – Same-store sales were up 29.9%  YoY, they did not disclose e-commerce for the first time (which is usually a warning sign). Episode 264 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday May 19, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 264 being recorded on Wednesday May 19 20 21 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Thanks Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners. Jason I’m still basking in the Afterglow of that conversation with Brad Stone that was really good and if listeners enjoyed that episode or any of the other ones that we put out any of the other 262 episodes available for there listening pleasure. We would love it if you would take a second right now pause the show will after I explain this pasta show go and review us in your favorite, podcast listening technology so if your on iTunes and using that that would be great or Spotify or. I don’t know the Amiga podcast listener whatever floats your boat if you would go in there and rate US that would be great because. That’s how we get paid here at the Jason Scott show we get paid by per review of so we really appreciate that. [1:31] Jason I wanted to pick your brain before we jump into some numbers that the topic of the show is going to be looking at some of the results from some of the retailers we track and then also there’s some other data, before we jump into that I have seen a lot of people on Twitter talking about it’s either an app or a site that I don’t know anything about so I figured you would. And I think it’s called Chez in or shine or she in or something like that it’s spelled sh Ein they came on my radar because it is a gues a Deca cord so it’s north of a 10 billion dollar valuation and it kind of came out of nowhere with over 10 billion dollars in Revenue last year so what is this giant monster site that that I haven’t heard of that’s on everyone’s radar all of a sudden. Jason: [2:19] Yeah you you nailed it it’s pronounced she in. And I it sent it’s a Chinese company it sounds like a Chinese word but I think that’s actually a trick I think it’s in English name and I. I believe it was originally she’s an Insider and it got shortened to she in. Scot: [2:43] Nice I don’t know if that’s proper English but we’ll go there. Jason: [2:48] Yeah that might have been why they shortened it. Scot: [2:51] Sometimes that gets people attention so it can be a good good strategy. Jason: [2:56] And the URL is much easier to type and when you’re a deck of cards you need a good URL. Scot: [3:01] Yeah maybe she’s an was taken. Jason: [3:05] I have a feeling it was. Yeah so they’re a fashion brand they’re a direct-to-consumer fashion brand I mentioned that they’re based in China. To my knowledge there not selling Direct in China yet which is interesting, so they mostly sell in international markets including they have a significant presence in the US so, so us listeners can go to she and.com it’s glittery sh e i in.com. Um and shop for apparel. [3:41] And they would self described themselves as real-time fashion and so the differentiation would be you kind of have, the original you know Trend based fashion retailers like a J.Crew or Abercrombie & Fitch, and then you know they really got challenged by these so-called fash fast-fashion Brands like H&M and Zara that you know would bring bring products to Market much faster, and therefore you know have an opportunity to hit Trends much more quickly, they had you know wildly more agile Supply chains and then she and takes that to a much further extreme, they allegedly have a supply chain that can you know get something from idea to Market in three days more typically it’s five to seven days, and you know instead of putting putting Brands out there at the equivalent of the Paris fashion show and taking orders, um they’re primarily working through influencers on various social media platforms throughout the world, um primarily micro influencers and creating demand, for their apparel and they’re using the data from all of their sales and their direct relationships with all these consumers. [5:04] To dictate what garments they make and what styles they leaned into and how they apportion, dollars to inventory so that’s that’s where the kind of real-time fashion comes in that they’re sort of a data-driven fashion. Company that would kind of next-generation hm or a sauce or somebody like that. Scot: [5:30] Cool so these cases a Kardashian says some kind of shade of pink is going to be the hot thing and then four days their sites covered in that product is that kind of the. Jason: [5:40] Yeah yeah although I I think a Nuance but more often it’s a favorite yoga instructor on Instagram that has 20,000 followers that says something is really cool, and so then enough of that gets made for those 20,000 followers. Scot: [5:59] Wow nursing solo actually be small small volumes like that. Jason: [6:02] Yeah the I do believe that they are smaller runs but it’s like they’re more likely to be working with those those kind of influencers than a Kardashian. And arguably those kind of influencers are a lot more authentic I think you know most most. Kardashian followers with know that like give Kim you know put something in her feed that she got paid a million dollars to do. Scot: [6:26] Very cool I know I know your kind of giddy with excitement about data and because last Friday the Department of Commerce came out with one set of data and then yesterday they came out with the other so we have now got the complete look at the data and I know I’m excited to hear your analysis and how did your data science robot do with all this new data coming in. Jason: [6:51] Pretty well pretty well so there were kind of two releases so it’s a big week Friday morning we got our monthly release and, the super brief primer every month the US Department of Commerce releases retail sales data and they release an advanced version which is kind of pulmonary and has some kind of course categories, that is data for the previous month so on Friday they release the Advanced Data for April they release a more. Bigger sample size data set with more granular categories that’s called the standard release and that’s a month. Inner ear so that would be the March data, and then once a quarter they release some specific e-commerce data and that e-commerce data got released yesterday so so we have both the the monthly data and the e-commerce data to talk about. Um and so let’s maybe start with the monthly data Everyone likes to talk about. This month’s sales versus last month’s sales which is I always remind people in retail isn’t isn’t. A very good way to think about it but just because that’s the way you’ll always see it reported I will tell you that April retail sales were flat versus March so exactly the same. [8:15] But if we compare April of 20 21 to April of 2020 retail sales were up a whopping forty six percent. And it’s probably obvious to you why they are so dramatically up but April was the, the month in the United States that was most impacted by covid and that was you know right when like we had all the fear and people didn’t know how it was going to play out and. Spending dramatically curtail the last April retail sales fell off a cliff so we’re comping against. A really soft number and then there’s there’s actually still some economic stimulus trickling in to the April number this year so. A perfect Confluence to have super high comp so and we did 46 percent. [9:06] When you talk about this data it’s always kind of important to remember there’s you know hit there’s winners and losers because of the pandemic so the, by far the the outlier data from from this was that the apparel category which has. Like I would argue had a lot of headwinds before the pandemic got absolutely blitzed in the pandemic. Apparel had the greatest comp month in the history of apparel since someone like invented the first fur to put on the naked guy. Perry was up 200 and or I’m sorry 727 percent from April of 2020. So good luck comping against that next year. Scot: [9:51] Yeah that’s gonna be a record I mean I know you’ve kept this data for a while but so I like the biggest. Jason: [9:57] Yeah it’s like by almost an order of magnitude it’s the biggest it’s the biggest jump I’ve ever seen in any category a bunch of in a way like. Clothing with so soft and things have opened up a lot this this month so it is a good sign for apparel and is we’re going to you know touch on later there other reasonable signs that that apparel is recovering and I would even say. It’s recovering a little more prominently than I might have expected it to so so that’s great news for everyone in the apparel industry. I’m happy for all of them there are other categories that were. Helped by the pandemic that were still wildly up right so you know people didn’t travel during the pandemic so they spent a lot more money on their home. [10:45] So furniture and home Home Goods was a good category for the whole year furniture and Home Goods was up to hundred percent from from last April a hundred ninety six percent. Sporting Goods which was another huge category that benefited from people not going to the gym they were up a hundred and fifty five percent from last year Electronics which had kind of a mixed pandemic some subcategories of electronics really good somewhere bad, um but Electronics was up a hundred thirty nine percent so a bunch of these categories were way up. Restaurants and bars you know kind of like close you know I had a had a tragic pandemic they were up a hundred and Seventeen percent so. A bunch of the categories that that makeup you know retail were wildly up and then obviously there had to be some. I think almost no one was down in fact I think nothing was down from April of last year but the you know some of the categories that didn’t have his biggest slow down last April, had had more like typical typical growth like the general merchants. You know that didn’t have to close in April at all like they’re up 15% year-over-year largely because they they didn’t have as big a drop last year. [12:02] And all that averaged out to what did I say 40 39 percent today. Forty-six percent so that’s kind of the story of overall retail sales, and then you say well what about e-commerce and so e-commerce data is not monthly its quarterly so we on yesterday got the q1 data for 2021, um so again two ways to think about that q1 versus Q for so versus last quarter and q1 versus Q 1 of last year so year-over-year and again I always encourage you, I think you’re over here for retail data so q1 is up 7.7% from Q4. [12:48] Which is actually a good number like ordinarily you would expect e-commerce to slow down and Q 1 versus Q4 because que no que for such a big quarter. All of retail was up seven point eight percent so so e-commerce kind of exactly mirrored retailgeek growth looking at q1 versus q 4, but when you look at Q 1 versus q1 of last year and so again last year was not pandemic impacted, um it’s a much different story e-commerce was up 39.1% q1 of 2020 versus q1 of 2019 so very robust growth much bigger than typically what we see. And that compares against Seventeen percent retail growth so that kind of in a nutshell highlights the dramatic acceleration of e-commerce as a result of the pandemic. And again you can kind of drill down into some categories and the Biggest Gainer would have been food and beverage and that makes perfect sense right because again. There wasn’t a lot of grocery e-commerce before the pandemic and everyone weren’t how to shop online. For groceries so e-commerce grocery was up a hundred and seven percent. [14:09] I’m trying to think what other categories had a the the do-it-yourself and Home Improvement category was up 63 percent, the general merchandise which has a lot of food and Essentials in it was up 62 percent, so you know a bunch of categories had had, you know way outsized e-commerce growth so that’s what the industry did and so as a reminder. When when you’re hearing all these companies do their earnings and they talk about their e-commerce growth and they throw out a big number you really ought to be comparing it to this 39 percent to see if they grew more or less than the industry average. Scot: [14:52] Then if I remember Amazon international did but us was a little below yes it’s like 36. Jason: [15:00] But in there right in that ballpark they not surprisingly they closely mirror the total industry growth because you know they alone depending on how you count our call it 35 to 45 percent of all e-commerce in the US. Scot: [15:16] On the crazy still can’t get the 727 percent out of my head on that number. If you went and annualized it still would be like 60% I guess you have to compound it I don’t know. Because it effectively the same as like not shopping for a year and then turning it back on is that kind of like essentially what happened but it seems like it’s even higher than that. Jason: [15:38] Yeah it is deeper than that like I’ll be honest the it’s fun to talk about this stuff but it’s such a meaningless number to comp against like month-over-month to come to comp against last year when April 20-21 was the, the most like unorthodox month in the history of retail so to kind of, Rebel things out a little bit what you could do is you could say well what are we your year-to-date this year versus last year, and year-to-date apparel is up 50 percent versus last year so, that is still very meaningful you know if you think about year-to-date it is 4 months and 3 of those months weren’t impacted by the pandemic. Like fifty percent growth is still is pretty significant. But it does you know apparel is a wild outlier and how fast a grew this month but if you work year-to-date you know category like Sporting Goods has grown more your today than apparel has. Scot: [16:41] This may be one of the first time off lines grown faster than e-commerce to. Jason: [16:47] In that one category. Scot: [16:47] I mean I know it’s a month in a quarter yeah no I mean like all in it was. Jason: [16:52] 7.7 versus 7.8 yeah Fair. Scot: [16:56] Arson. Cool and then so then we had a bunch of retailers actually put up their numbers so then that’s super helpful to kind of so now we have this kind of Baseline so that’s the rising tide and I know you are official Walmart tracker what did you see out of Walmart’s numbers. Jason: [17:16] Yeah so before we jump into that list maybe just have a moment of appreciation for all of the retail reporters this week because I feel like. We had a ton of earnings calls and a lot of them are like late at night or off our so I do pity some of those guys that had. Tour card for one week a year or when we could quarter I’m teasing so that being said. [17:40] Walmart like I would argue was a significant winner in the pandemic and they continue to have strong momentum so. I’m not going to get into all the financial numbers that you know are tied to the stock performance because you know I don’t care that much about the stock performance of these companies I care how much stuff they sold, so the two numbers I’m can I’m caring about the most our same store sales comps and e-commerce comps, so same store sales growth for Walmart was up six percent, versus last year and e-commerce was a 37 percent versus this quarter last year. [18:23] So those those are both good numbers normal same store sales growth like on average we look for is around three or four percent so six percent very healthy, and you know e-commerce comps used to be in the kind of 15 to 25% so 37 percent, is a good number I will tell you that because of the pandemic people are talking a lot about comps versus two years ago and so that six percent comp sounds good but, this quarter’s retail sales were up 16% from retail sales two years ago so the year over two year calm, is pretty pretty stellar for a retailer of the size of Walmart the largest retailer in the world to be up 16%, is a sign that they were definitely a Shear gainer in the pandemic. A couple of things I’ll point out that are interesting. [19:22] One of the trends in the pandemic is people are choosing fewer stores and giving those stores more their business and so my argument is like we need to be looking at who the winners and losers are in that calculus Walmart’s a clear winner, um their transactions are actually down three percent so three percent fewer people walked in and bought something from them, but every time someone bought something they bought ten percent more than they did last year, and again if we look at that on a two-year basis their transactions are actually down over eight percent and their basket sizes up 32% so what’s happening is, you know I’m a millennial that used to get booze at Total Wine and produce from Whole Foods and shelf-stable stuff from Walmart is now getting everything from Walmart and. [20:08] That’s a big win so so overall I would argue that that was a really strong quarter for for Walmart, the story of all these earnings is going to be the e-commerce is still going to be wildly up but the growth is going to be decelerating so I kind of tried to pull the last several quarters from all these companies, and kind of lay out a trend so first quarter to the pain Dynamic Walmart e-commerce is up 97% second quarter of the pandemic Walmart e-commerce is up 79% third quarter to the pandemic Walmart e-commerce is up, sixty-nine percent so amazing run, for the second largest e-commerce site in the US and then q1 they were up 37% so 37 percent is awesome in every way except that it’s much smaller than. The last three quarters. Scot: [21:01] Yep and then I was reading the transcript and I saw that John ferner president of the US was talking about the last mile business I think one of the analysts asked about it and you track this morning I do but they have a ton of stuff going on with Last Mile they’ve got that thing with the body cam they’ve got a you know a drive Network kind of a thing, this was interesting so they said we’re excited about our last small business we’ve been operating our first delivery vans that are Walmart branded in the market here in Arkansas and we’re learning a lot as we go forward when I when I saw that I had this mental image of my street that already has a couple Prime Vans going up and down at a FedEx and UPS and I imagined a Walmart truck followed by a Target truck then a, J.Crew truck and Abercrombie truck. The target you know that’s a Target so I know where does this Home Depot and Lowe’s trucks where does this where does this go. Jason: [21:56] Yeah well first of all I think maybe Walmart just decided that there was you know it was too easy to buy a delivery van in the US so they wanted to make it more difficult. Because as I’ve learned from you those things are in very short supply but yeah the. Last Mile sales, outside of the store are the story of the pandemic and we’ll be talking about that with some of these other earnings, reports but I want to say I’m not sure Walmart disclosed it in in their earnings call but like I’ve seen other reports from Walmart that why curbside pickup was up a hundred and thirty percent class quarter. Um so so all these these last mile things are way up and if you’re at Walmart scale you have to try a bunch of different things to try to be able to get. [22:46] Those those groceries from the parking lot to the customer so most often it’s the customer comes to the parking lot and picks it up. But but Walmart you know is partnering with a lot of third-party delivery services so you know I think they sort of have a network of them including instacart that they use in some markets. Um they started their own delivery service where they contract drivers to drive for to them and those drivers were mostly using private vehicle so they you know they were competing against Uber to get drivers to drive Walmart orders to people’s homes, that’s called spark delivery and there’s a flavor of that where they tried to recruit Walmart employees to be the drivers, and so what I think John was talking about specifically in the earnings is a specific variant of that spark delivery where instead of the driver using a private vehicle that they’re using a test Fleet of Walmart branded vehicles, and there’s a bunch of benefits for that when you’re delivering grocery you can have refrigerated Vans and climate control, so you can start doing more deliveries per trip instead of like kind of point-to-point single deliveries which is what you mostly have to do with. Independent contractors and private Vehicles so I think that’s what he was talking about but as you pointed out Walmart also has in home, delivery that I forget what they call it but they have a porch delivery service where they install. [24:13] Coolers in your porch and deliver to that they’re you know they’re they’re wisely, kind of testing every delivery method you can imagine and there is demand for all those things but don’t lose sight of the fact that the high volume big money for these guys that aren’t like predominantly in, in high density metropolitan areas like Walmart is curbside pickup it’s people coming to the store and picking up their orders. Scot: [24:39] Nursing so you’re not not envisioning 40,000 Walmart trucks are Vans delivering stuff every day. Jason: [24:45] I doubt it you know II think we’re going to I think I have a feeling that Amazon’s last mile delivery capacity is going to grow a lot faster than Walmart’s I just. I just think when you like look at the demographics of the Walmart shopper, the unit economics just don’t work as well but who knows maybe I’ll be wrong I can’t tell you in general consumers don’t want to pay for any of those delivery services so that’s the rub you got to find a way to profitably do that. Now you know Walmart’s traditional Nemesis is Target and they also reported did you get a chance to look at the Target numbers at all. Scot: [25:27] I did I was looking for an announcement of Target Vance didn’t see one but on the results so some of the highlights. In the u.s. stores were up 18% on a same store sales basis digitalism 50% so quite strong beating your friends at Walmart there. That Blended together puts the us up at 22.9. Same day which you know they’ve talked a lot about and then has been growing Way north of a hundred percent if I recall slow down to a paltry. And that’s powered by shipped I’ve used that service a lot it’s really quite strong and they’ve done a really good job of that and integrating it right into the system and check out everything. [26:08] Curbside curbside did give them their triple-digit grower up a hundred and twenty-three percent. So that is interesting to see so maybe maybe we’re seeing people as the pandemic the thaws move from same-day delivery which does have a fee to more of a curbside. As you’ve predicted pretty frequently. [26:30] Ninety-five percent of their orders were filled from stores so this was this is one where they have been touting ship from store for a very long time and. This number is crept up if I recall it was kind of like, 60% 80% 95% I think is the highest I’ve seen it that’s that’s a lot makes you question why do you have a warehouse if you’re only shipping five percent your orders out of a warehouse has the other flip side of that number, and then the same kind of trend that you gave so if we kind of go back a year, Q2 of 2020 e-commerce was a hundred ninety-five percent and then Q 355 percent. Q 418 percent and then q1 of 2021, it grew only fifty percent so definitely seeing these as as we’re lapping at least on the online side as or lapping the covid quarter, the growth rates are coming down pretty substantially that’s that’s q1 you know could actually go, yeah flat- on some of these folks as we get into Q2 because that was where the the bottoming out was just be interesting to see that but, you know what’s nice for these omni-channel guys is the stores are picking up and you know in there comping very positively against this time last year so it’s been nice for them to have that portfolio of online offline and then even the subs of delivery and curbside and whatnot. Jason: [27:54] Yeah no hundred percent and I think. Again I think Walmart and Target are kind of the net winners in the in the pandemic so they you know both both put up great numbers like you know objectively the target numbers across the board are better it’s just against a much smaller base than. Then Walmart so you know Walmart is impressive because they already were so big Target as are just super impressive and I feel like, hugely beneficial that Target that they had Acquired and invested so much in shipped right before all this happened and made those capabilities. Particularly valuable the thing I’ve been tracking is Target you know has recognized that that people like that last Mile and they like coming in the storm picking stuff up in the parking lot so they’ve been dramatically expanding what you can pick up so, originally you couldn’t get groceries from curbside pickup at Target and so during the pandemic they slowly figured out how to add groceries to that mix and you know what they added this quarter that I think is really smart is adult beverages is alcohol. [28:59] Which a lot of other retailers do not provide jet so you now can can you ship to get your booze so they’re both competing on last mile delivery with like the drizzly, yeah and I guess one other thing I would just say about Target before I move on, to me it’s a super interesting I think Walmart and Target both have Smart strategies for themselves and what’s interesting is how diametrically opposed they are I think Walmart is. Really trying to compete on the long tail against Amazon of skus and try to have as big an assortment as possible and so they’ve leaned into the marketplace, I think they’re up to north of 40 million excuse for sale now and to do that they’ve had you know really beef up their warehouses you know I think they’re like. Between Thirty and forty e-commerce fulfillment centers now which is way more than anyone in the US with the exception of Amazon, and they’ve even had to launch their own you know fulfillment by Walmart service to compete with with FBA from Amazon so Walmart’s doing all these things to compete. [30:10] For that long tail against Amazon, Target is gone the complete other way Target is said hey we’ve got 60,000 super desirable skus in our stores and those are the items we’re going to sell and so our e-commerce sales are going to be the same items that are in store sales are and that’s why they’re able to do that, 95% fulfill from store is because. They’re selling you know a much smaller assortment of items and of course as we’ve talked about in the past a lot of those items are items that you can only get from Target because they’re exclusive Target brands that are doing very well so. Scot: [30:45] They’re digital Shelf deniers. Jason: [30:47] Yeah so the I think you know those are two interesting strategies that those two retailers are both employing to win. So then there were some apparel retailers that reported this this week and I think that the big two ones were Macy’s and TJ Maxx I think Ralph Lauren’s going to report tomorrow morning so we’ll have to we’ll have to cover that one next time. [31:10] Macy’s again apparel starting to have a recovery you know / that US Department of Commerce stuff you know Macy’s has a significant component of. Of apparel, so so their comps were as far as I know like the most up I would argue you know Macy’s struggled the most in the pandemic so that makes it, easiest to comp up and their sales were decimated in April of 2020 so against work you know what kind of comping. Um one one really bad or a partial bad month in their in their quarterly stuff but there comes were up 62 percent so that’s. That’s astronomical and their e-commerce comps were up 34% so they’re about the only, retail example I’ve seen where the stores grew more than e-commerce and so again following the theme. Q1 of 2020 they had 53 percent e-commerce growth then Q 2 Q 3 they went to 27 percent growth Q4 they went to 21 percent growth, and then q1 they re accelerated a 34% so that’s. Um a very different shape than we’ve seen from almost any other retailer and my speculation is because they had such a rough time last year. Scot: [32:36] Yeah I think they mentioned they’re having a hard time hiring so I think a lot of this is cut a lot of people by surprise a little bit that you know the. The surgeon to man so both sides on the down side of the V shape and then the upside is been hard for everyone to kind of manage them. Jason: [32:52] Yeah and we’re not even talking about but they’re all kinds of like supply chain challenges like you know everything still topsy-turvy I don’t like I don’t think the apparel guys were expecting this faster recovery I’m they might have hoped for it but I don’t think. They plan from it from an inventory standpoint so there. Scot: [33:09] There’s a chip shortage so if you have any blue jeans that have a chip in them you’re toast. Jason: [33:13] Yeah yeah that is crushing some other Industries for sure and I’m desperate for a new Apple laptop so it’s going to it’s going to be heartbreaking if they delay those because of the chip shortage. Scot: [33:28] I think they make their own Sulkin so I think you’re okay. Jason: [33:30] They do but I still. Scot: [33:31] Is the Taiwan semiconductor. Jason: [33:33] Okay well we’ll see. And TJ Maxx is I’m sort of sad because TJ Maxx is one of those retailers that does not report e-commerce growth. You know it probably isn’t super significant because in their their industry e-commerce is tough because there. The inventory depth is a lot less and things turn a lot faster so the argument is harder to put all your inventory up on a website, but their comp sales had a nice recovery there their comp sales for the quarter were up 16% and so you know to kind of put that in perspective last year, they they were down. 3% 5% and 3% so going from three- quarters in a row two up 16% is a, a super wild healthy swing you know and I think it just kind of reflects the rebound we’re seeing in apparel. Scot: [34:37] Yeah and then the home builders which is home materials companies Lowe’s and Home Depot you know this has been another part of the economy that’s white hot right now in fact there are suffering shortages you can’t get wood all kinds of things are really hard to get these days so it was interesting to see them solos I’ll do that when you do Home Depot, Lowe’s they’re cops came out at eleven point three percent which is their same store sales e-commerce was up 36.5%. [35:07] Which is pretty good you know if we kind of if we’re kind of keeping score here we had Target e-commerce at 50, Walmart at 37 and then Macy’s at 34 so, yeah these guys are right in there at 36.5 so in with the pack there, but then if you look at the trend same story so Q 2 year ago effectively a hundred and thirty five percent Q3 of 20 2106, Q4 of 20 21 21 and then q1 2021 36.5%, when I see numbers like this I’m kind of thinking well if I’m the head of e-commerce there you know working on your 2021 bonus plan would have been pretty interesting you know how do you, how do you know what you do you can’t talk about a hundred and forty percent growth so you know hopefully they all figured all that out and come in on or ahead of plan on that side, so a big jump off there just like we saw with the other ones but to be expected and I think that Trend will continue in Q2 probably hopefully bottom out and then in Q3 will start to see them kind of get to kind of Positive quarter-on-quarter year-over-year Growth trends. Jason: [36:14] Yeah I mean it everything’s going to be topsy-turvy for a couple of years here but I take that is really encouraging right like there’s kind of two stories here there’s, there’s Industries and retailers that did really poorly last year and so they’re they’re seeing big numbers because, you know they’re They’re copying and very soft comps but Lowe’s and Home Depot which we’re about to talk about like actually did really well in the pandemic so for them to still be putting up, you know objectively big numbers like 11% store comps and 36% e-commerce comps is a really helpful sign like you might have expected them to get a lot softer if, if their demand was exclusively tied to pandemic Behavior so. So that was an impressive earnings for lows and then the only bad news for Lowe’s is that Home Depot looks to have done even better, um so their comps were up an amazing 29 percent. And I’m I didn’t pull the data but like I think Lowe’s perform similarly to Home Depot in Q2 of last year so I don’t think this is a day against a different base I think Home Depot just, had a better quarter than lows which is super impressive and then sadly I can’t tell you what their e-commerce growth is. [37:36] Home Depot ordinarily does disclose their e-commerce growth but they usually disclose it not in their their earnings filings which is kind of a gap thing, but in their investor presentation when they’re talking about their earnings and for some bizarre reason this year or this quarter, Home Depot reported their earnings yesterday but their investor presentation is until tomorrow so we’ll probably find out tomorrow what their their e-commerce growth was but. To put it in perspective it was you know slightly softer than lows but it’s a bigger, base so they were a hundred percent in Q2 of last year and then up 80% in Q3 and then up 83 percent in Q4 so it’s, it’s going to be really interesting to see if they can match rose with that kind of 35 to 40 percent growth and in q1 that’s that’s going to reflect really well for them. Scot: [38:29] Freckled extra walking us through that so it was really interesting to see this data as compared to the US Department of Commerce data and for we sign off it wouldn’t be a Jason Scott show without. Jason: [38:42] Amazon news your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [38:57] Yes I thought I would sneak a little quick Amazon news in here a couple things none of these are interrelated other than the Amazon connection. So some of the logistics folks I saw kind of you know chalant Lee said hey look Amazon are which is their their network of planes that deliver Freight back and forth that the kind of competes with FedEx and UPS to some degree, they added Pittsburgh and Kansas City as destination airports so you know they’re building out this networks they started at, CV G which is kind of the the main airport that like near Louisville that a lot of a lot of people use here, I’m Cincinnati Louisville and that kind of was the Hub now they’ve expanded from one airport Hub two to three and I think this is like five and six that they’ve added and there’s been a lot of reports that we haven’t had time for on the show where they’re buying more and more planes, so this Amazon Logistics infrastructure just keeps getting bigger and bigger, I’ve stopped I used to track the number of fulfillment centers I’ve stopped doing that there’s other people that have full-time folks that track that now but it’s just insanely massive and and even hard to keep track of they’re so far ahead on that. [40:11] One I thought of you when I saw was they did a little Pharmacy news where they were talking about how they’re going to bring price transparency to the pharmacy. There’s all these sheep I know how these work there and I do but there’s all these discount cards that are out there and all these different you know and then of course copay and not copay, so they announced that they’re going to have a pretty simple place we can go and enter all your information and it’ll kind of give you total price transparency but also kind of share where the best where and how to get the best prices. Did you feel like that was a game-changer or is that just kind of a yawn. Jason: [40:47] I’m not sure I would call it either the. To me I felt like Amazon putting their own user experience on an acquisition that they made last year that we talked a little bit about on the show so they had one of these like Pharmacy, discount plans for non prescription meds and I want to say it was I get these confused sometimes but it was. It was a good RX or RX saver maybe so they acquired one of these discount plans and and so I think the announcement was them kind of. You know taking the friction out of that and making that a more robust offering and and kind of rebranding it as Amazon. So that’s it’s a step forward but I’m not sure I would call it a game changer changer. Scot: [41:38] Okay one small step for pharmacy transparency one giant leap for saving money the other one that’s really interesting and this is kind of in the rumor phase but you know I think probably saw that there was a big transaction in the movie space and as part of that it kind of shook loose mg M so the antitrust folks there’s two companies that merged they I think MGM kind of had to be a part of that and there’s a lot of talks that Amazon’s looking at buying MGM and they have a massive Library, I think on the new movie side they’re not super exciting they’re not one of the top top folks for new movies and new content but I think their library is pretty interesting and you can imagine Amazon buying that and then locking it down for only Prime subscriber so that could be a really interesting move, and then there’s Jeff Goldberg Greenberg your Goldberg Greenberg Jeff Green, Jeffrey burglars a Jeff guy that I’ve met before he’s kind of their headquarter Dev guy he recently resigned and now they’re saying he may come back to run this so that would be kind of an interesting thing. Did you see any Amazon news that was interesting too. Jason: [42:47] Yeah yeah I’ll add one to your list and I feel like this is in direct response to me being a little annoyed by some of Amazon’s naming and I think they got the message and fixed it for me which I’m very appreciative of, but as listeners will know Amazon has a lot of grocery store concept so they you know have this chain of grocery stores that they call Amazon Fresh. Um The na of course have these convenience stores with just walk out technology called Amazon go well astute followers of Amazon will know that there’s a couple of grocery stores in Seattle that were, branded Amazon go grocery. [43:28] Which felt like a weird outlier like you know originally the go concept was supposed to be a grocery store as reported by Brad Stone, and they had trouble making that work so they downsized it to a convenience store and then they later launched Amazon fresh as their grocery. And there are a couple of these like pilot stores that were called Amazon GO Grocery and so they’ve they’ve closed one in Seattle and they’ve rebranded the other one to from Amazon go grocery to Amazon Fresh so there, cleaning up the names a little bit. And it is interesting because I want to say the Amazon go stores are branded Amazon Fresh in UK as well so there still is some naming confusion but seems like there. But it’s got I feel like that’s a overwhelming amount of news to cram into one show so we are going to wrap it there as Scott reminded us all at the beginning of the show if you enjoyed this episode or if you learn something from it we sure would appreciate it if you jump on iTunes and give us that five star review as always if you have any questions or comments feel free to hit us up on the Twitter or Facebook. Scot: [44:46] Thanks everyone for joining and we appreciate those five star reviews. Jason: [44:51] And until next time Happy Commercing!

For episode 12, Andrew is joined by Marc Wulfraat, Founder and President of MWPVL International, a global supply chain consultancy. Marc has compiled the most robust dataset on Amazon Logistics locations and has a keen understanding of Amazon's supply chain strategy. Marc details what the 2020 growth spurt entailed, what it means for Amazon's future, and how long before the network is opened up to other retailers.Apple PodcastSpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

For episode 12, Andrew is joined by Marc Wulfraat, Founder and President of MWPVL International, a global supply chain consultancy. Marc has compiled the most robust dataset on Amazon Logistics locations and has a keen understanding of Amazon's supply chain strategy. Marc details what the 2020 growth spurt entailed, what it means for Amazon's future, and how long before the network is opened up to other retailers.Apple PodcastSpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

EP262 - Amazon Q1 Earnings It's Q1 earning season. We recap Amazon, EBay, and Shopify Q1 earnings reports. We also lightly touch on Google and Facebook earnings and cover some other Amazon news. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 262 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday April 30, 2021. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 262 being recorded on Thursday April Twenty Ninth twenty twenty-one, I'm your host Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Hey Jason and welcome back to Jason Scott show listeners well Jason it is late April and you know what that means. Nope not pollen season not finally warming up in Chicago it is earning season. Jason: [0:56] I thought it was the week before Star Wars Day. Scot: [0:59] Oh yeah that's coming up lot a lot of exciting May 4th things going on but that's not the focus of today shows Today's show this earnings season it lined up really nicely for podcasters so we appreciate all the big companies working with us on this so the sequence that was kind of interesting is we had Google first on the 28th and then eBay that same day and then Amazon and then I'm sorry Shopify so it went. Google Shopify eBay Amazon and Amazon was today so we have kind of four of the key companies that we like to talk about all releasing so, gives us a good chance to kind of see where we triangulated on q1 the other one that announced in there is Facebook and we have a couple tidbits from that one, in fact I'll kick it over to you to start there. Jason: [1:51] Yeah so Scott one of the interesting things in Facebook's announcement is they referenced the the likely impact that the that Apple's changes to mobile, app tracking the idea of a would have on their go forward advertising revenue and is a reminder. We did a deep dive into changes in privacy from mobile cookies and from mobile tracking and from from third-party cookies and episode 257 which was a very popular episode. But one of the things we talked about is Apple's making it harder to track. [2:30] Mobile app behaviors and the company most impacted that by that is Facebook because. Facebook sells a lot of ads to mobile app Publishers to help them get installs for their mobile apps and they'll now have, a lot more difficult time doing attribution For Those ads and being able to State when those ads trigger an actual install. So in the earnings Facebook had pretty good earnings and in their guidance they said they still expected the that ad, Revenue to grow but they did acknowledge that the changes to IDF a would be a headwind. That likely would slow down the rate of growth of advertising related to these mobile apps and this this change that Apple was doing actually took effect in the. [3:25] The iOS 14.5 which released this Monday which I think was three days ago April 26. And a related side note that that's interesting to me about Apple is Apple is super good at getting all their users to update their operating system so it's been like three days in a huge huge majority of apples users are already on that new operating system so, whatever effect it's going to have on Advertising Facebook is starting to see it we probably won't get any data about what it was for at least a month. [4:01] But Facebook is undoubtedly already feeling it whereas where you know Google to make a similar change with with Android. It would take much longer to take effect because they're their operating systems tend to get deployed much more slowly. Scot: [4:18] Yeah. It's a as a app developer the Android operating system is a huge Bear Tooth to support everything people will call up and say I'm still on I forget what C is I'm still on KitKat and caterpillar and your thing doesn't work like that's 30 years old dude get upgrade your upgrade your operating system. Jason: [4:42] Exactly sir So speaking of Google did you follow their earnings at all. Scot: [4:48] Yes and. Just briefly that episode 257 I've had a lot of people say that it was the first time they understood cookies I DFA and the Cookie list feature so kudos to you for explaining it in a way that people can understand I like to take eighty percent of credit because I kind of interviewed you on that one and I like to say I answer I asked all the right questions and that's that's kind of what led it to be set to get up soon. Jason: [5:13] I feel like you are the Terry Gross of cookies. Scot: [5:17] Fresh air okay let's talk about Google results so we normally don't cover Google results here but it was pretty interesting because as I was scanning through some of the analyst reports it kept seeing a theme and the theme is that Google's search volume surprised everybody it it was up thirty percent year-over-year and what they call course or search which is people going directly to google.com not distributed through like the Apple relationship in that kind of thing that surprised everyone it was they're expecting con 24 percent year-over-year and they got thirty percent so kind of over 6% beat there and when they asked the CFL about it they specifically said that retail as a category was driving that strength, and that they saw eighty percent year-over-year growth and local businesses including lots of searches I hope you're sitting down these are some of your favorites with local inventory availability and drumroll, curbside pickup so so yeah so people are using the Google to figure out where to get curbside pick up and they do I do like this feature that if you need something for like a project you can say you know where is a I don't know a electric sander near me And if you do near me it will Keys Google to show in. In stock inventory at retailers near you so that's evidently become quite popular. Jason: [6:43] Yeah fun fact when you do a search on a mobile device Google just assumes you mean nearby and gives you those results. Scot: [6:50] I always do near me so I can I guess I can stop doing that I'm old school I like to really explicitly State my intent to Google for those exactly what I'm doing. Jason: [7:02] You are helping to train the algorithm they greatly appreciate that. Scot: [7:06] Yeah and then I thought this note was really interesting for listeners I'll just kind of summarize it here you know one of the Wall Street guys said that this was you know refreshing because quote in our view retail search query share lost to Amazon has been a, pillar of the Google bear bear case so a lot of what that let me translate that so so I people are worried that Google is going to eventually lose share to Amazon which we talked about on the show all the time on the show all the time and then it continues the emergence of true omni-channel retailing amid covid has demonstrated Google's relevance in an environment where multiple strong retailers are focused on digital and then they asked management and management said that they think that these behaviors are likely to stay around for a very long time and use the word permanent and they called out dopest and curbside again and then, you know they management highlighted how they've kind of integrated advertising and e-commerce Services across search maps YouTube as well as the core search experience so I thought that was interesting for Google to be talking so much about ta retail a kind of you and I have been talking about this forever that everyone says OK Google has you know they did that thing where they put listings into Google shopping for free and everyone's like is it too little too late so it does seem like Google is definitely refocusing on on the retail segment and you know I think. [8:32] I think I'm calling it out on a earnings call has kind of been a first for a very long time that I've heard. Jason: [8:38] Yeah yeah it is interesting and obviously I work for a big evil advertising agency so we see and talk about a lot of these trends, two things to know is right in the pandemic that the two biggest change to advertisers behavior is they you know we were all. Terrified that everyone would advertise less which you know would be bad for my my career longevity and people did temporarily get really conservative but pretty quickly they bounce back but what they did is, the. [9:15] Shifted a ton of their budget from traditional advertising vehicles and predominantly TV to digital so that was like a hugely beneficial Trend to Google, and then the other thing they did is they shifted from all these awareness ads what we would call top of funnel, um to ads with a more miserable call to action which is code for Commerce right like that you know, they wanted to run ads that they could measure sold something instead of ads that just got Impressions and so both of those Trends in my mind. Where you know nice Tailwind for Google and I don't know if this is a commonly known fact or not but but retail has has been the largest share of ads on Google for for some time so, that you know all of those things were favorable and I would just point out to other interesting tidbits I we've talked about this before but I think the. Google losing search to Amazon is. [10:16] Like there's a grain of truth to it but I think it's way overblown like a the explicit data that's all over the Internet is horrible right like it's from. Thousand user surveys of where they claim they do searches, and it's the truth is it's impossible to know because all of those claims are not search volume Google's search volume vastly exceeds Amazons, they're what they're saying is that product searches are going to Amazon not Google but no one can Define what a product search is. Scot: [10:48] Yeah it's the Paris Hilton problem. Jason: [10:51] Yeah yeah there's no taxonomy or yeah exactly that's why I hadn't heard that example before but I love it so so yeah I you know I think. That both both Google and Amazon are we're huge beneficiaries that probably saw their search get you know significantly accelerated so. That was interesting and then I would just point out like because, they specifically called out boat bus it is interesting there it appears that most retailers are equally convinced that the curbside pickup phenomenon is is going to be permanent and out wave the pandemic right because, we've seen Target announced that they're doing a significant expansion of their curbside pickup programs and you know that hopefully the pandemic is starting to wind down right now and yet they're still. Doubling their capacity of curbside pickup locations and then Walmart made an interesting announcement Walmart had all these robots these really expensive robots inside of the stores to do in-store pickups. And they've said that they're actually decommissioning all of those Towers because customers don't want to come in the store to pick up their goods anymore they want to do curbside pickup. Scot: [12:04] Interesting rabbit spent a lot of money on this. Jason: [12:06] Yeah and you. Scot: [12:07] Maybe we could get a used one for the Jason's gotcha. Jason: [12:09] Yeah if I will try to pick one up on that on the second-hand Market if I can but. Scot: [12:14] Put it in your condo in Chicago. Jason: [12:16] My wife would love that. Scot: [12:18] Hmm. Jason: [12:19] It's exactly her Decor Giant Orange robot Towers but the Stephen would love it for sure but the. Scot: [12:28] Think about it she could say Jason have you seen a charger and you could be like hold on in the the tower would spit one out at it. Jason: [12:34] Exactly yeah well remember these are Walmart one so it you would ask for a charger and you'd get a banana. But obviously in all seriousness so I. If Walmart thought that the curbside pickup was a pandemic only phenomenon they wouldn't be decommissioning those Towers so it's. You know it remains to be seen what's really going to happen but it seems like the retailers have a lot of confidence in in this being a permanent new consumer Behavior. Scot: [13:05] Yeah one last thing on Google you jog my memory when they talked about more activity at the bottom of the funnel they talk about e-commerce but then they also kind of did I kind of I kind of caught it as throwing a little shade at Facebook they said yeah we've seen a huge surge in app download ad buys because they're they're not. Because all this traffic is inside their Network they don't have the the IDF a or the cookie-less problem that Facebook has. Jason: [13:32] Yeah yeah I think I like I'm not shocked that they pointed that out but I think that's all it has the added advantage of being true like they they probably are a beneficiary yeah. Scot: [13:41] Yeah well called the next up was Shopify what did you see that tickled your fancy in there. Jason: [13:49] Um yeah so they're continuing to kill it like you know certainly if you're an investor they are doing very well by you so they had like a hundred and ten percent year-over-year growth I think it was 94 percent last quarter so that's accelerated growth, the like obviously q1 is an interesting quarter for all these retailers because there was this you know economic stimulus that was in q1 this year that was not in q1 last year and so, that that helps everyone's comps this year and it makes everyone super gloomy about their comps. Either their quarter-over-quarter comps that are worried about next quarter and their year-over-year comps there. They're also worried about next quarter because they don't have the pandemic Aid that the as much as they had last year. Um Shopify of course in additional Revenue has a gym V number and the gym V grew even faster so a hundred and fifteen percent. And I would just remind people that what like as an investor I love all these numbers they're super exciting but I see people all the time use them as some evidence that the. That the long tail sellers are thriving and growing on Shopify and I would just point out that like. [15:13] These numbers are the amalgamation of likely hundreds of thousands of sours many of which have. Like less than 12 months of more you know of life and there's huge churn, and so the these growth numbers are more indicative of Shopify signing up twice as many businesses as they had last year than they are that the businesses that are on Shopify are, doing twice as well because quite frankly there's a lot of evidence that that. The the majority of Revenue growth in retail is disproportionately going to these large players at the top of the echo system and not all these long tail players that you know tend to live on the Shopify. [15:57] So that being said you know everyone like it's interesting to see how everyone spins their Q2 right, so you're starting to lap the pandemic and I think I would characterize the Q2 comments from from Shopify as being kind of conservative right like they. They painted a picture about facing some significant headwinds and I think they they told investors that they plan to significantly ramp up investment spending. So you know that that. May well be smart but it you know sometimes investors don't like to hear that they'll be pouring all the prophets. Back into the company and they did my favorite topic of all like they you know they did talk about. How successful their their Shop app has been the mobile app and I think they disclose that. Scot: [16:52] The marketplace. Jason: [16:53] Exactly the marketplace that put Amazon out of business I think is what I read on Twitter. The by the shop arrazi I like to calm the Shopify zealots. They disclosed that the mobile app has 24 I think 24 million active monthly users am I remembering that number right Scott or. Scot: [17:14] Ma use as we say in the biz. Jason: [17:16] Exactly so. You know that's a meaningful amount of users now what they don't disclose is any hint of Revenue or gmv that goes through that app. You know are what or you know how people are using that app so I you know like it's predominantly a shipping tracking app and so I the. The positioning it as a shop app is is in my mind pretty thin at this. Scot: [17:50] Yeah absolutely when other. Jason: [17:52] I'd be shocked if 500,000 people have ever bought something from the shop app so the fact that they have 24 million active users doesn't doesn't mean a lot to me it doesn't mean they're taking any share from Amazon. Scot: [18:04] I like their payment system because they've gotten it now to be more like Square where if you once you enter your e-mail it kind of like send you a code and then fills everything out I like that because I can never remember my password I mean this stuff so. Jason: [18:16] Yeah authentication via email in general is a. A rapidly-growing ux trend and it mostly is way more secure because it encourages you not to. To have it easy to remember password that can easily be hacked and some payment providers even give you the option to not to literally not have a password. So I agree I like that user experience I think shop pay is an excellent product and, you know I didn't see any mention of it really in their earnings report but last quarter. Was the first quarter that that Shopify made shop pay available to people outside of the Shopify ecosystem because they you can now accept shop pay on Facebook check out which is also used by Instagram so. Scot: [19:04] Yeah where it shows up is Shopify is interesting it has its kind of like something like forty percent of their revenues are kind of traditional software as a service subscription revenues, and then 60% is effectively at a grade on that gmv almost like a marketplace where they get subsidies subsidies you have subsidies from the payment providers their own payment system they're loaning program Backstrom some of the shipping providers and that's kind of where that take great comes from and that take great increased pretty materially from two point three eight two point six five and they largely, called out the adoption of shop pay amongst that pool of GMB as a driver as well as some of the other other like the what's it called The Loan program where if you need some like a little spot learned by some inventory I always. Jason: [19:58] Finances are called or something like that. Scot: [19:59] Yeah something like that they all have PayPal everyone has one now that saw that grew very dramatically to kind of like a 300 million dollar kind of a quarter loaning base up pretty substantially from so that was also part of the take rate move so, that's that's where you can kind of dig in and find where that's going on in their earnings. Jason: [20:19] Yeah yeah and I would at the risk of turning this into a two-hour show I would just say like the digital wallet space in the u.s. is super interesting to watch the. Pre-pandemic 23% of e-commerce used a digital wallet in the US as a result of the pandemic 23% went to 30 which is a, pretty decent acceleration but to put that in perspective. The worldwide average for e-commerce is 44 percent and China over 75% use a digital wallet and you look at, a bunch of the shopping experiences that work in China where 75% of the people are paying with a digital wallet, that haven't worked very well in the u.s. when we only had 23 percent using a digital wallet you go man if digital wallets catch on in us and continue to grow like this that's going to open the door to a lot of new Commerce experiences like social commerce. Scot: [21:11] That's cool and then did you see that they're going to do some more investing in the Fulfillment. Jason: [21:21] I did I did like there continues to be some controversy on on Twitter about how bullish, some of the the industry experts are on that but. It to me it makes total sense like I I actually think that's a smart play for Shopify and in general they like they pivoted, they used to mainly be in the business of renting servers to people to host, stores and increasingly as you've already pointed out like their business model is to make money on services that they provide to small businesses right and and though it just X is one of the most lucrative potential businesses, you know if I were a third-party carrier I would not be in love with that trend. Scot: [22:08] Yeah well called The Nut next up we had eBay and, this one was kind of the most interesting so so far both Google and Shopify were kind of what I would call kind of beaten raise so you know already in an elevated environment the pandemic they exceeded already high expectations and then they kind of raise going into the next quarter. [22:29] And then eBay came out and they were definitely a beat on q1 but then as they started talking about Q2 people kind of freaked out a little bit so so on the Q one side the GM V which is the transaction volume going through the marketplace exceeded the street forecast by 4% and therefore Revenue beat by 2% and it was actually there they're q1 gmv was higher than their q4g Envy which you know is pretty interesting feet because most times you you surge up in the queue for you come down and then by the time you get to Q3 it's kind of levels Q4 and then your next Q4 is a step up so if you look at eBay over time they've got this stair step and then they had this really interesting inflection point and yeah I think that's largely driven by this whatever it's called the stimme dollars so I think they were beneficial of beneficiary of that people buying I don't know if maybe a hard to hard to find collectible they've had the ion or something but then when they projected DMV that. Pretty material decline in there for Q2 and that really kind of freaked people out that you know the they're not going to be able to sustain growth so. Yeah I don't know if it's conservatism or here we are the other interesting thing is these guys have about a month of the current quarter to kind of. [23:46] Factor into their guidance for that quarter and it just felt like eBay I think the read-through was eBay was seeing something there in April that they don't get pretty conservative and it's interesting because and you know so far, we have talked about the Amazon but of the other companies they reported we didn't really get much other than like that Facebook warning that you kind of hey you know we may see some softness from this IDF a thing so that was the scoop on eBay. Jason: [24:12] I have a. Scot: [24:13] Another good. Jason: [24:14] As you can see I have a hypothesis there that I'd be curious if what your perspective is on so Q 2 of this year they'll be competing against Q2 of last year Q2 of last year was the. The the thrust of the pandemic and that that initial tranche of people that suddenly were afraid to go to stores and we're buying everything online and if you you think back to that time, you know Amazon had a service level glitch there right like they conservatively pulled back on shipping a lot of non-essential Goods to really focus on. On shipping essential goods and that had the consequence of. Shifting a lot of purchasers off of Amazon to Alternative e-commerce sites for the first time in a long time and so, I think like Target Walmart and eBay were all beneficiaries of that Trend in my hypothesis is that Walmart and Target feel like. They had an opportunity to permanently capture some of those customers but that eBay may feel like hey people came and bought stuff from us when, when Amazon was on you know two-week delivery windows but when they go back to one day delivery Windows we're not going to get the we're not going to be able to keep those customers. Scot: [25:27] I think I like your theory that makes a lot of sense yeah and also spoiler alert for our Amazon section but they're going to be doing a June Prime day so that it's going to create a headwind for everyone because you know they're going to suck some of the oxygen out of the room in Q2 whereas last year it was in Q4. Hard wait was it was October September to September right. Jason: [25:53] October. Scot: [25:55] Yeah okay so last year it was cute for. Jason: [25:59] Well maybe we should pivot to Amazon. Scot: [26:01] That's a great idea Jason let's talk about Amazon so Amazon came in with net sales up 44 percent to 108.50 billion with a B in the first quarter so that is very strong on the US side they were up 39.5 digital's physical stores were down 16% again I think that's a little bit of a. Kind of a head fake because you know that's going to largely be grocery which is moving to delivery and curbside but that puts it over outside of physical stores and into the digital side of things so a little bit of a apples and oranges thing there are attribution I guess I should say. [26:38] Some of the metrics oh I should say International was up 60 percent year over year so that was pretty impressive so International is seeing a really nice acceleration you and I are talking before the show in the green room and you know you pointed out that open up some new markets which I agree but Internationals kind of been lagging the us for a while and now it's really picking up I wonder if they're starting to see some of the benefit of you know like all my friends and UK say things are in pretty good shape there the vaccination rates are up and that kind of thing so I wonder if they're starting to feel some benefit from that on the international side that that was interesting. On the third-party side couple of metrics I look at is the share of third party is holding steady at 55 percent and then they do talk about a couple other metrics that you can kind of read through here 3rd party seller Services were up 64 percent that's largely FBA and some of the things they charge for some small subscriptions for stores then they have another category which is subscription Services that's where Prime lives and that was up 36% and as a reminder they did reiterate in the in the release the Bezos letter 200 million assertion on Prime subscribers so, interesting to see that kind of reiterated in the press release and then you know hope you're sitting down but because. Jason: [27:59] Yeah it's got before you go any further like it's impressive that they sold all that stuff but it's a shame they don't make any money on that right. Scot: [28:06] Yeah yeah and I know you and I have talked a lot about how Amazon is never profitable well they did make a little profit the eked out a profit this quarter net income was twenty six point nine billion, and what's a fun fact with that is you take the profit from q1 2021 of twenty six point nine billion that's more than Amazon's profits from the three past years 20 17 18 and 19 if you add up all the net income from those three it was 24.7 paltry twenty four point seven billion and so just in this first quarter this is a nursing idea that kind of gives you an idea of the scale that Amazon is kind of growing this thing they did twenty six point nine billion so they did more in q1 than. [28:50] Previous three years and in profits so you and I get this whole thing where Amazon wouldn't be profitable if it wasn't for AWS well yes AWS is a, pretty good kind of portion of those profits but it's not a hundred percent and international is now profitable the marketplace is profitable retail is profitable, so Amazon is turning into a cash flow generating just a machine and Wall Street loves this so their stock was up, pretty materially I would say last I looked kind of 10 to 12 points so that was interesting and that profit was kind of a beat as well so then as they gave Q2 guidance they they actually were kind of pretty bullish so they said that they expect pretty strong continued e-commerce growth and then of course they're going to have a prime day which is about a 10 billion dollar benefit shifting there so this was a kind of a you know not only a beat for q1 but a little bit of a raisin Q-tip so everyone was pleasantly surprised by that so little bit different than the eBay story which kind of ties into what you were saying I know your favorite as Chief digital retail curbside grocery officer there at an ad agency I know you like to track ads how did that do. Jason: [30:09] Yeah so you know you mentioned AWS and AWS is a very good business that any of us would like to have but my hypothesis is. It's it's potentially. The third best business at Amazon so I actually think that that Amazon may have made more money in the last 12 months selling ads than they did on AWS and the reason for that is if. If you can sell ads it Those ads are almost pure profit right so. For the last quarter there are there other Revenue which is mostly the ads they sell to Brands and Merchants was up seventy three percent so that's a great rate of growth, we won't even talk about run rate because the ad business is kind of seasonal but if we just, look at the trailing 12 months. Other Revenue was twenty four point four seven billion dollars so so they sold 24 billion dollars of ads in the last 12 months, and they're only cost to do that is a little bit of infrastructure costs and some salespeople right so that's almost. Pure profit so that you know that may have spun off 23 million dollars in. Scot: [31:30] Yeah that's that's pretty good. Jason: [31:32] It's a it's a good. Well no that would have been in 12 months so but still like compared to their you know that's a likely more Revenue more earnings than they get out of AWS which we'll talk about in just a minute and I just. Backtracking for one second like that they don't, report separate financials for third-party sales versus first party sales like they they give us some cellular data but just as a reminder in third-party sales it would almost be impossible not to be profitable right like because. They don't really have any carrying costs they sell a bunch of services to those Sellers and then they take a commission when that seller sells to a buyer in the fact that that's the majority of the retail sales like it's almost inconceivable that, that the the 3p business at Amazon isn't more profitable than AWS also so I would just in my mind both of those businesses are probably at least as good as AWS which is also excellent. Scot: [32:35] Yeah I agree. Jason: [32:36] So that being said AWS had another good quarter you know again there they're the dominant player in cloud services so you know the fact that they're still growing like this is, is pretty impressive their q1 year-over-year growth was 32%. So it is obviously decelerating a little bit but that you know 32% is pretty healthy clip, that unlike the the sales business so I get is I think fair to look at run rate for AWS because. You know people don't tend to turn off their servers for part of the year so that. They're basically at a fifty four billion dollar annual run rate on AWS which is a, you know nice healthy Revenue rate. [33:33] We don't really have a way to compare apples to apples and as you were kind of educating me offline there's definitely some fuzziness particularly in Microsoft's numbers because. They have a lot of their own cloud services that they you know potentially are including in the Azure number but, some kind of back of NAB can estimates I've seen for the size of azure that may or may not be inflated have Azure it around 30 billion dollars against and Amazon's fifty four billion, and Google Cloud platform you know is probably in the nature of like 16 billion so both Azure and Google say their businesses are growing it just under fifty percent so they're growing faster than AWS but off of a much smaller base. Scot: [34:24] Okay. Okay any other tidbits want to talk about here this was an interesting one where they they said in the press release they said and I'll say this I'll quote this to make sure I don't mess it up in the u.s. same day delivery in as fast as 5 hours is free on orders over $35 for over 3 million items in select cities so five hours so we've talked a lot about same day Prime is going to be the standard we talked in previous episodes that go puff is really I saw another article that, they are doubling but they're getting a lot more competition so you know I think that Amazon is going to really start to turn up the heat on go puff by getting down to. [35:14] Hours if not minutes of delivery for those kind of essential items that people want so snacks and ice cream and starts to hit some of the grocery items as well and then the continues this is an addition to free same-day delivery on millions of items and thousands of cities and towns across 47 major US Metro areas plus over 10 million items available for free one day delivery Coast to Coast so you know so it's really interesting so there's these concentric circles where the little the smallest circle is three million items in select cities so that's probably like 5 or 10 is kind of how I read that then you come out and then you get same-day delivery on millions of items and thousands of cities, and towns across 47 metros so 47 metros three million and then the biggest ring is 10 million items for free one day delivery Coast to Coast so pretty, pretty interesting that they're continuing to grind away at getting things to you faster with a bigger selection closer and closer and closer to you. Jason: [36:14] Yeah I actually think I think is all super impressive I think you might even be conflating two things that are both like, expansions of their very fast delivery I interpreted that announcement slightly different than you U iqu it sounds like we're thinking that that's, referencing Amazon's company competing with go puff and I would argue also like door - for delivering like top off groceries right so stuff that you might have picked up at a bodega, in the pre-pandemic world you're now getting delivered to your house and this this digitally native company go puff that bought BevMo asked year like they're there. [36:56] They're growing quite well providing that that kind of service and we've we now have some evidence that Amazon is building out fulfillment centers to compete with them so. This publication called hungry actually like like found video of the. The contractors that are building these new fulfillment centers and they're targeting delivering like you know a small assortment of groceries in under two hours and there's one that's under construction here in Chicago, so that I think that's all true I don't think that's what they're talking about here what I think they're talking about here is delivering the most popular items from the Fulfillment centers, with a faster service level and, part of the reason I think that is they talk they made this announcement today and I got a new experience on Amazon today so I live in Chicago. We tend to be one of the first markets to get a lot of Amazon services but I put some stuff in my cart and it had a new message that I hadn't seen before which is, you know order this in the next X hours and get it delivered by 8 a.m. tomorrow if you spend a minimum of 35 dollars. [38:11] And so the fact that that those offers had this $35 threshold and Amazon specifically referenced the $35 threshold in there. In their comments and their earnings call make me think that that's what they're talking about so I don't think it's the. The grocery items are the go puff competitors that are talking about here I think it's. Popular items from Amazon that a week ago they would have said ordered in the next 4 hours and get it tomorrow which. Tomorrow at my house usually meant they delivered it like 8 p.m. at night and now they're promising it like at 8 a.m. Scot: [38:49] Perry nursing yeah let us know how that goes. Jason: [38:51] Yeah I in fact ordered a few things so I'll be curious to see if I get that am delivery tomorrow. Scot: [38:57] Call any other Amazon highlights before we go to the summary. Jason: [39:01] You did allude to they confirmed not in the earnings announcement but in their investor, call they did confirm that they were moving Prime day to June and as you referenced last year as an anomaly it was in October because of the pandemic. But ordinarily Prime day is in July so the way to think of this is they are pulling Prime day in earlier than they typically did. Which is interesting they said that it's because they they 4 sieve some would just take challenges in July and the Fourth of July puts a wrench in things and they think June is just a better. A better fit for Prime day so so likely we still don't know the exact date but expect to see Prime Day in June this year I have a. A partial hypothesis that another reason that they would move Prime day to be a little earlier in the year is. They did have primed a last last year in October and it was very successful and I will be shocked if Amazon doesn't invent some new Sales Event. In October of this year so if that's true that would be another reason to space out the sales events more by making Prime day earlier in the year. Scot: [40:20] Yeah and arson cool so to summarize if we kind of start and build up we have so imagine your head a chart where we have eBay at 24 percent growth Amazon North America 39 Amazon international at 50 and then, Walmart e-commerce they haven't reported yet but just as a baseline there it kind of 69 and I would be shocked if they don't do as good if not better than Q 1 and then Shopify at a hundred and fourteen percent so that's how it kind of stacked up and I forget Jason when you did that initial read I know they don't do the converse one yet but they have that. Other Commerce or whatever they call it how does where do they kind of fall into that stack you remember. Jason: [41:08] Yeah so it's a it's a mess it's a lower number so so Ike the US Department of Commerce which I assume is what you're asking about like, they're they're tracking around 25% which sounds way way lower than these numbers the that non-star sales number is higher so that's like in the 30s. Adobe released some data that they said q1 was like 35 percent and. What used to be internet retailer magazine now I think it's called digital 360 they came out and said that they saw e-commerce at like 45 percent growth so so there's numbers all over the place right now. Scot: [41:56] And then they'll update that one though and in like the next 30 days right so we'll get a better picture. Jason: [42:01] Yeah yeah so the the e-commerce out quarterly and so I think that's going to be mid-may I'll have the intern check on that while we're. We're chatting but but I think that is right. Scot: [42:20] Any other interesting Amazon tidbits you saw. Jason: [42:24] I think that was everything that the jumped out at me there is a little bit of Amazon news outside of the earnings do we wanna talk about. Cool before we do I will just confirm that the ecomcon quarterly data from the US Department of Commerce will be May 18th so some middle of next month. [42:46] So other Amazon stuff that was interesting to me a couple of things a lot of activity in the UK so. Amazon has opened their first Amazon go stores in London so they for the first time have just walk out technology. In London unless I'm misreading something it's interesting because the it sounds like the stores there look exactly like the stories here but they're branded Amazon Fresh in the UK which is interesting because. [43:22] In the u.s. those stores are called Amazon go stores and Amazon has an entirely different retail concept that is. So far not just walk out technology that's a grocery store that's called Amazon Fresh here so it's interesting. That they're they chose the Amazon Fresh name and the just walk out technology and related to that we also got news, from Bloomberg I think that from that day he broke a story that it looks like there is a Amazon Fresh door under construction in like Connecticut. And he got copies of the plans and it very clearly shows the. Though I turn Styles and mobile scanning units and stuff of Amazon ghost or so and I think Amazon even confirmed it was true. That it appears they're going to be opening their first full-size grocery store that. [44:17] Has just walk out technology and in some small way we were part of that news because you and I sort of broke the news. That some of the grocery stores that were not just walk out technology had all the cameras from just walk out technology and and you'll remember we theorize that they might be using those cameras to collect data for a future. Just walk out grocery store and Amazon confirm that that was true as well so we were right. Scot: [44:45] Wow yes. Jason: [44:47] Exactly yeah so that was interesting to me all of this just walk out stuff, the the more fun wacky news from London was the Amazon opened another new retail Concept in London and this is I think a much anticipated one that we all saw coming a mile away Amazon has opened a hair salon. Scot: [45:07] Yeah I found this one as a Services person I found this one interesting and also scary at the same time and then as I dug in it seemed like a gimmick like someone else is actually running the salon and it just seemed like a gimmick to sell more Echoes I guess because. But article kept talking about how they be highlighting you know kind of in home automation kind of stuff do you think there's something or in some beauty products too. Jason: [45:33] Yeah so I think two things are going on and who knows right so I joke I certainly didn't see this coming but so yeah so they, they've opened their own hair salon they've hired a established well-known hairdresser in London, to be responsible for the actual hair styling. And they've invented a lot of new in store or in Salon I guess you would say Technologies for the store, so they're using augmented reality to show you what your haircut is going to look like before you get your hair cut, which is a new technology we haven't seen before they're using digital signs with gesture recognition to give you product information about the, the Professional Salon Hair Care Products oh so imagine they have a shelf of shampoos. You point at one of the shampoos and a screen above the shampoo knows which shampoo you pointed at and and gives you content about that particular shampoo and then you can order that shampoo by scanning a QR code. So all three of those those Technologies would potentially have broad application and a bunch of retail categories and you know as someone that talks a lot about. [46:52] Digital technology is moving to store one hypothesis I have is that Amazon decided that a beauty salon would be a good. Sort of laboratory / proofpoint for testing some of these new technologies that they're rolling out right and so. I think one of the reasons they may have opened the store is to give them a customer facing way to test some of these Technologies and they work well. [47:16] You would expect to see him in Amazon forest our stores and bookstores and and you know at some point selling them to other retailers. But the other thing that Amazon has leaned pretty heavily into is broader product categories and B2B, and so one one decent size category is the B2B Beauty category right and so these are products that are not sold at Walmart but are sold by professional hair stylist to their customers. And Amazon has been trying to recruit more sellers to sell those products, and in the same way you need a liquor license to legally sell beer, you most of these B2B products contractually you have to be a salon to buy and sell and so, I have a hypothesis that they may literally have opened a salon so that they could go to more vendors and get those vendors to give them access to their their B2B beauty products. Scot: [48:22] Yeah because a lot of what a weird lot of things require stores these days so that would check the box. Jason: [48:29] Yeah and I mean like it's a little known fact but like there are there's a fulfillment center in every state that you can walk up to him by alcohol right because the. The like you can't get a delivery liquor license only and so so like there's a door that's not advertised in one of these fulfillment centers to meet the requirements for that liquor license right and there's no lot about these beauty product distribution but as a, it's a contractual term and you know it's just it's conceivable to me that Amazon is doing this as both a learning opportunity and. Couple other little interesting tidbits bunch of news today we try not to get too much into the political stuff but Amazon announced a significant wage increase for 500,000 of their employers so, they said that that would they be investing over a billion dollars a year in giving 500,000 workers arrays of between 50 cents and three dollars an hour. So that's that's interesting like Amazon has you know use the fact that they were one of the first three tears to embrace the $15 minimum hour. [49:43] Thing as a as a kind of foil against some of the the the negative press they get I personally feel like the labor market just getting really tight and it's getting hard to hire. And Amazon is Raising wages because they they're continuing to grow like a weed and need to hire a bunch of people and they're finding that they just have to pay more to get the people they. Scot: [50:05] Yeah you might as well get political credit for it while you do. Jason: [50:07] Yeah it's like you do it a month earlier and you get that that for a first mover PR and then when Target matches it just won't look as impressive. Um and then there was a little bit of a buzz, you know Amazon had done a bunch of seller unfriendly things like they actually started masking if you're a 3rd party seller on Amazon and you you don't fulfill your own good so you use fulfillment by Amazon. Amazon is no longer telling you the name or address of the customer that bought your goods. [50:40] Which a lot of people you know we're found found to be kind of offencive and so then a couple weeks ago they launched a new program that actually gave brands on Amazon. Better access to Amazon customers they actually launched a campaign where you could pay Amazon to email. Um marketing material to your customers your fans on the Amazon platform and so there was a lot of. Talk about this being you know a potential thawing of the ice and in all these you know things Amazon does to kind of. The customers and seller separate I think it got a little overhyped because to be honest right. The conditions for that program are pretty restrictive so I don't think it's going to be a huge amount of people that can take advantage a you have to be a brand that's registered in the Amazon brand registry so you can't just be. 3rd party seller you know that's that you can't be like a wholesaler of Chinese Goods or something like that but then. You can only email to people that have designated themselves fans of your brand page so again you have to be paying for and have a separate brand page and the only people you get access to are the people that clicked the like button on your brand which you know is probably not a lot of people on Amazon. Scot: [52:10] Yeah but it is kind of you know that that plus the next one that I'll go over were I view them as signals as this kind of like nibbling away at Shopify think that we've been talking to him about it's the one I wanted to talk about is they made an update to their fulfillment fees and one of the things that's interesting is they've offered what they call multi-channel fulfillment so FBA was born to essentially give you the choice as a Marketplace seller to either fulfilled them yourself or have them Prime eligible through FBA then they've introduced seller fulfilled Prime and all this other stuff but the intent is that all those programs are for things to ship things that were sold, on Amazon through the third party Marketplace then I think like five maybe seven years ago they introduced kind of multi-channel fulfillment where you could run your whole store. [53:00] Your whole online store you could have a Shopify store for example and then route those orders to FBA what's nice about that is you didn't have to split your inventory so a lot of a lot of people that don't just saw on Amazon they would have to send a big pool of inventory to FBA then they'd have a separate pool of inventory somewhere else and then Murphy's Law is kicks in and you would send not enough to FBA or too much and then you know you'd have to constantly be load balancing your inventory between the two two warehouses so they introduced this kind of multi-channel fulfillment where you can send everything to FBA and then you could fill your fill your eBay orders your store orders and your Amazon orders through one channel then a couple years ago so then does like 7 years ago let's say and then a couple years ago they started to kind of like, really limit people's availability to this program I think they started to see that FBA was becoming so full and they just really wanted it to be so for single Channel the Amazon Channel fulfillment. [53:56] And then now they announced that they are going to add an option to block orders from being shipped by Amazon logistics for a 5% surcharge because sales channels like eBay and Walmart prohibit the use of Amazon Logistics you'll be able to block this shipping method at the account level within your FBA settings, so this is interesting to me it signals that they're refocusing on this as an option you eBay and Walmart explicitly disallow this what happens there is they don't like it when you buy from eBay and Walmart and it shows up in the Amazon box it confuses the consumer I've seen this happen a lot but also you know you know it's really confusing I remember a story where this kind of urban legend the eBay CEO at the time whose name I won't say went to the mail room and he saw yeah all these Amazon boxes and as he dug into it everyone was ordering off eBay but everything was showing up in Amazon boxes so so I think they then very quickly kind of came up with a policy that that was bad and that they would not allow that anymore so what's interesting here is so then if you're not going to fill to eBay and Walmart why do this well the answer is they want to capture some of those webstore fulfillment and. [55:14] You know we had Faisal talk about this on Twitter where he kind of viewed shopify's week underbelly as fulfillment so this is another one of these little kind of things and it may be my radar is just kind of. [55:27] Too high on this and I'm over reading into it but you know it's the emailing to Brands they would have never done that, two years ago are emailing allowing you to email to your to the customers that you that you acquired on Amazon or that interacted with you on Amazon, all right let me see let me reset it allowing you to remarked it to the Amazon Doan customers that you're borrowing for leasing or whatever that's kind of a new bridge they're going over and then this one is interesting so I thought those were two interesting tidbits in this kind of, larger war between eBay and Shopify or Amazon and Shopify. Jason: [56:00] Yeah yeah I just want to take half a step back because I feel like this is potentially hard to follow right but essentially, you're saying so let's pick a brand and they're probably not even using this programs but just for Simplicity, I'm anchor and I make batteries instead of like having some batteries in my own Warehouse that I can ship if you order my products from Walmart or from anchor.com, and having some of my batteries in Amazon's fulfillment centers that you know Amazon will ship if you order it from Amazon. I send all my batteries to Amazon and then if I sell one on my website I tell Amazon to ship one and if I sell one through Walmart I tell Amazon to ship one, and, Walmart didn't like that because those batteries were showing up in a Amazon box and so Walmart and eBay and I imagine others have said hey, you're not allowed to use Amazon to deliver our packages that you sell on our on our platform right that that's the gist of it. [57:03] Um so one wrinkle the way I interpreted this that I'm not maybe is different so this option is, is not to say hey we won't fulfill your Walmart orders if you check this box I think the option is will still fulfill your Amazon your Walmart orders, but we'll use UPS instead of Amazon Logistics so I think Amazon would just X is actually the, Amazon Flex in the Amazon W2 employees that deliver stuff. Scot: [57:33] You're right yeah you got it and then yeah and then they do offer a re boxing so maybe that solves the boxing problem and then the reason while Mart and eBay don't like the Amazon Logistics that the truck is there's no tracking number that that's easily accessible so yet also you know we saw in the UK they announced. What they called door-to-door Amazon Logistics where they used an example where a retailer on High Street can ship a product to a consumer through the Amazon Logistics which is to me is effectively competing with FedEx and UPS and con Sebastian had some really good reporting on that that I thought was interesting I didn't put that on our show notes but that was another thing that just jog my memory there so all these things are getting closer and closer to 2 Amazon competing with with the carriers. Jason: [58:29] Yeah and I think for sure your hypothesis that hey Amazon would only be rolling out these kind of policies that they were planning to lean into these. These delivery outside of Amazon service has more right so that makes perfect sense one other thing I'm not sure if you caught in the the call. After their announcement with the CFO another service that the CFO and nouns that I was surprised about because I've had this service for a year in Chicago but apparently it's not it wasn't. Um he announced that they were providing bitter granularity into shipping tracking. From Amazon Logistics so the example he used was, like you you'll get proactive notification when your package is about to be delivered and you'll get something that says like hey your Amazon driver is 8 stops away, and that you can you can Track Em on a map just like you would track doordash delivering a restaurant meal to you. And the reason that surprised me as I've literally been able to do that for a year when Amazon's delivering something I get a notification and I can see the guy on a map. So that those kinds of services you could imagine like could address some of the objections that that other sellers would have about trackability because that's way better tracking than you get from UPS or. Scot: [59:54] Yeah you just don't have that you know you can take a FedEx or UPS tracking number and split it into anywhere and there's kind of like it's very easy for any consumer to track it's not Amazon school not quite there yet. Jason: [1:00:05] Sure well Scott is going to surprise no one but we've taken this short earnings call podcast and turned it into a full hour of our listeners time. Scot: [1:00:17] Boom we give the people what they paid for. Jason: [1:00:19] Exactly good more than what they pay for for sure but one way they could pay us for it is they could jump on the iTunes, the new improved podcast experience on iTunes and finally give us that five star review, and we sure would appreciate that and as always if you had any questions or comments or we confuse the bejesus out of you feel free to hit us up on Twitter or Facebook and we have to discuss it further. Scot: [1:00:48] Thanks everyone for joining us for this earnings recap. Jason: [1:00:51] And until next time happy commercing.

Last week Amazon spent $131 billion for a 19.5% share in ATSG, which operates aircraft it leases. And many believe Amazon Logistics is looking to restart delivering non-Amazon volume from its shippers. So what is up with all this activity and investment? We talk with Kiri Masters of Bobsled Marketing about the pieces that are in place. The post Amazon Logistics: Ready for Prime Time? appeared first on Multichannel Merchant.

Ashley Lansdale, Regional Public Relations Manager, Amazon Khary Miller is a Delivery Service Partner with Amazon Logistics through his company Black Star Delivery. Khary began his business with Amazon Logistics in August 2020 and runs a team of 70 delivery drivers with 33 vehicles delivering Amazon packages to customers in Metro Atlanta. Prior to becoming […] The post Ashley Lansdale with Amazon Logistics and Khary Miller with Black Star Delivery appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Ashley Lansdale, Regional Public Relations Manager, Amazon Khary Miller is a Delivery Service Partner with Amazon Logistics through his company Black Star Delivery. Khary began his business with Amazon Logistics in August 2020 and runs a team of 70 delivery drivers with 33 vehicles delivering Amazon packages to customers in Metro Atlanta. Prior to becoming […]

Dave and I sit down for a sharp session on what we can expect to see for your Amazon operations in the next 5-10 years.In this episode we discuss:Big changes he expects are coming this year, and in the next 5 years of operations/logisticsHis thoughts on Amazon LogisticsWhat conversations he think the Amazon transportation team are having at the momentAutomating delivery through roboticsSeller Fulfilled PrimeWhy Amazon has unreasonably high standardsYou can find Dave on LinkedIn here.Other resources:LaunchPod Academy 14-day trialAmazon advertising account managerListen to It's Always Day One podcastFollow on LinkedInSubscribe to emailsRead the email archivesJoin Amazon Creatives private group

Faaalaa pessoal!! Está no ar o Conecta Economia #18. Neste episódio discutimos sobre a chegada da Amazon Logistics no país, seu funcionamento e seus possíveis impactos. Discutimos também sobre a proibição de demissões na Argentina e a crise imensa que isso está levando nossos vizinhos. Na mesa, temos dois economistas e um maluco (só resta saber quem é quem...). A apresentação é de Will Soares , com os comentários de Douglas Soares e Matheus Santos .

Hoje nós vamos falar sobre o Apple iPhone 13 que pode chegar sem cabo carregador, o Galaxy S21 que deve chegar no dia 14 de janeiro, e também sem carregador, e a linha Moto G lançada no Brasil.

We provide the means for the planet to return Amazon, for the benefits of our lifetimes --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/aquaqlabs/support

France and the Netherlands jointly issued a call for the bloc’s competition authorities to take pre-emptive measures against big tech companies, and investors have been unimpressed by recent US bank earnings despite lower loan loss provisions. Plus, the FT’s Dave Lee explains whether Amazon will be able to handle the logistical hurdles thrown its way this holiday season. Falling interest rates drag on Bank of America and Wells Fargo profitshttps://www.ft.com/content/8b8a4bec-6d28-462e-a18f-73b4856e1fc7Amazon braces for winter of demand with relentless expansionhttps://www.ft.com/content/9cd8038e-b38c-40d6-b2db-8f6e01cd166a?France and Netherlands join forces to back EU move against tech giantsft.com/content/4a9ed79e-c8c8-4b47-8055-1cd029541c32 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jochen Krisch und Marcel Weiß fragen sich in den neuesten Exchanges, was der neue Investor für Hermes bedeutet. Und sie sprechen außerdem darüber, was DHL vom Corona-Paketboom gelernt hat (oder auch nicht) und wie Amazon Logistics vorankommt, ob der deutsche Markt Platz bietet für No-Frills-Anbieter und mehr. Werbepartner: * Das Facebook Update, der Podcast von Facebook: Mehr Informationen im Facebook Marketing Hub https://fb.me/facebookmarketing * mymuesli: Gehe jetzt auf https://mymuesli.com/exchanges und sicher Dir ein Probierpaket im Wert von €12,90 mit 6 leckeren Sorten grastis zu Deiner nächsten Bestellung ab 9€.

In this episode of Logical Logistics, host Joe Becht takes more Logistics and shipping questions. Logical Logistics is powered by Bellair Expediting at www.bellair.com. For more from Joe Becht and Logical Logistics, head to www.beslogistics.net For questions, more information or to be a guest, email host Joe Becht Joe@bellair.com.

In der heutigen Folge der Sondersendung "Logistik gegen Corona" vom BVL.digital Podcast dürfen wir einen Blick hinter die Kulissen von Amazon Logistics werfen, um zu erfahren wie der Konzern die Corona-Krise meistert. Unser Gast heute ist Armin Cossmann, Regionaldirektor Logistik bei Amazon Deutschland. Mit unserem Host, Boris Felgendreher, spricht er unter anderem über folgende Themen: - Kurze Vorstellung von Amazon Logistics Deutschland und dem Hintergrund von Armin Cossmann. - Wie erlebt Armin gerade ganz persönlich diese Krise? - Wie ist die Stimmung im Team? - Was sind die größten Herausforderungen mit denen Amazon Logistik gerade zu kämpfen hat? - Welche konkreten Maßnahmen sind erforderlich um den Betrieb aufrecht zu erhalten? - Wie wird die Sicherheit und Gesundheit der Mitarbeiter gewährleistet? - Was wird über die Unternehmensgrenzen hinweg getan um gemeinsam die Krise zu bewältigen? "Logistik gegen Corona" wir unterstützt von der Initiative "die Wirtschaftsmacher" Mehr Informationen über "die Wirtschaftsmacher" unter: http://die-wirtschaftsmacher.net/ Mehr Informationen zu Amazon Deutschland unter: https://www.aboutamazon.de/ Mehr Informationen zu BVL.digital unter: https://bvl-digital.de/ Mehr Informationen zur Bundesvereinigung Logistik (BVL) unter: https://www.bvl.de/

EP206 - Amazon Q4 2019 Earnings Deep Dive  Amazon released their Q4 2020 earnings on Thursday Jan 30th.  In a holiday quarter that has proved to be challenging for many retailers, Amazon soundly beat analyst expectations, and raised their governance for Q1 2020, driving their stock up.  Amazon's market cap is currently larger than the next six largest retailers combined, and their competitive advantage may be even greater. In this weeks episode we do a deep dive into all the details of the earning report. We look at top line results, AWS, ads, physical retail, and Logistics. We break down what it all means, and leave you with our conclusions. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 206 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, January 31st, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 206 being recorded on Friday January 31st 2020 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners it's exciting times in the world of retail and e-commerce Amazon reported their fourth quarter results back from 2018 feels like a a year ago even though we're still in January of 2020 and they were so impressive and important to I think everyone in the ecosystem not only retail but e-commerce and shipping that were really going to focus to do it dive in this episode on really understanding and unpacking these results probably in a deeper way than we've ever done so look forward to taking you on that journey and love any feedback you have on that before we do that Jason you in a couple short weeks are going to be representing the podcast sadly I can't make it but you will be in each OS tell us about that. Jason: [1:27] Yeah I'm very mixed feelings I'm super excited to go to Palm Springs Palm Desert area in February which is a much warmer than it is in Chicago as you. You may know and we have a bunch of I think pretty interesting guests lined up for podcast so so stay tuned for that but of course it's always sad to be an industry event without you and I always feel like I'm cheating when I record a. Show without you but obviously there is a segment of fans who feel those are the best shows in their favorites. Scot: [2:00] Yeah your mom and it's pretty much pretty much it. Jason: [2:04] I'm pretty sure she's not in that segment. Scot: [2:06] Boom Cooper I look forward to seeing who you can rope into doing some interviews those are always really good but that is coming up in let's talk about Amazon. Jason: [2:23] News new your margin is their opportunity. Scot: [2:33] So we're kind of mixing it up as I mentioned at the top of the show this was such a big quarter that we think it's really important to spend a fair amount of time on it so so we're going to break this into three parts so we're gonna talk about the setup going into kind of holiday and what we learned before Amazon announced I'm going to go through the highlights of the results there we can spend the bulk of the show on an analysis really kind of picking apart what's this mean for the industry so Jason want to take us through the setup going into Amazon's. Jason: [3:05] Yeah so obviously Q4 is a super important quarter for all of retail and it's been a little checkered coming into this Amazon announcement so MasterCard which has a panel of all people that shop with a MasterCard had reported that retail sales for the quarter were decent I think they said total sales were up three point five percent which is average to good. Growth rate for total retail and they said e-commerce was up 18% and so that, in and of itself didn't seem so surprising but then individual retailer started reporting. [3:51] And the folks that you you might have expected to be distressed we're generally more distressed than expected in the people that you might have expected to do well also seemed down so it's been this odd thing where MasterCard said hey overall it was kind of an average quarter and then the overwhelming majority of people that were reporting we're reporting a pretty disappointing quarter so you know that that created extra anticipation coming into. The two biggest retailers which were Amazon last night and then Walmart is on a really goofy fiscal year and so they won't be reporting toll February 18th, if I have it my memory serves but so. You know you wouldn't expect JCPenney's to kill it but they were down like 7.5% Cole's was down which has off-price retailer had traditionally been more resilient bunch of the apparel companies were down Macy's was down L Brands was down even some like value stores like five below which is in that dollar category those guys were down and Target was up but they were way below their guidance. [5:06] In general you know reading into this quarter it's felt like a pretty depressing quarter we've also seen a lot of evidence that the quarter was way more promotional in any quarter ever which means profits are likely going to be down and we've heard anecdotally from a bunch of these retailers that manufacturers, have way more inventory than they usually have this time of year and so there's a lot of distress inventory that manufacturers are trying to pump through the retail Channel right now so all sort of bad indications leading up to Amazon's announcement last night so Scott can you tell us how that what what how it transpired. Scot: [5:48] Yeah I would say that it was Wall Street was was extremely surprised pleasantly surprised in the world of public companies you have this kind of you know what what's the current period expectation and then what's the forward period expectation so the current period and this conversation of fourth quarter of 2019 the forward quarter would be q1 of 2020 so this is what's called in Wall Street lingo a classic beat so they beat the fourth quarter of 19's expectations and then they raised the q1 2020 expectations. When you do that you frequently. I'm have a pretty immediate and exciting stock action and that was certainly the case here so Amazon stock surged today Friday to 2008 that's a price not not a year which is a over 7% one day increase if you follow small stocks you know that may not seem like a big deal but this is a trillion dollar stock so 7% is seventy billion dollars of market cap that was created so I don't know how that compares this probably like 20 JCPenney's or something something like. Jason: [6:56] Yeah so I did look at it and it's fluctuated a little today it actually like as we're recording this show it's. Slightly nominally under a trillion dollars but, it's the equivalent of the next six largest retailers in the market so Amazon's market cap is the same as Walmart plus Home Depot + Costco + lows + CV s + T.J.Maxx. Scot: [7:20] Yeah but even just the 74 billion created today is larger than many individual retailers. Jason: [7:25] Oh yeah the 74 billion today is a larger market cap than TJ Maxx or Target it's. Scot: [7:32] Wow so you talked about it but that put some work just shy of the trillion dollar Club I think they're going to get there and we'll talk about what Wall Street thinks that's going. Shoot Em Up There, but just for folks that are tracking this apple is ahead at one point three five trillion and Microsoft's 1.3 trillion so Amazon's flirted with the trillion market cap club and I you know I think it's pretty safe to assume here that they're going to get there pretty quickly and stay there for the rest of 2020 so let's talk about the highlights that caused this this exciting and peeled onion a bit so you know, one thing that's not customary for Amazon is talking about how many prime users they have so in they're releasing on the call they talked about having a hundred fifty million Prime users and in the fourth quarter they sold more Prime memberships than they ever have before in any other period that's pretty material because you would think maybe Prime day would beat fourth quarter but you know that's not the case so so fourth quarter compared 30. Prime days in third quarter so so they must have sold more Prime memberships from the holiday sales than they did from Prime day. [8:39] Last time they announced this it was for the calendar year 2017 they announced it in 2018 and they said they had a hundred million so they have added 50 million Prime subscribers over a two-year period essentially so that's pretty impressive from that there's a line item that counts that revenue and that's called subscription services that accelerated to 32 percent growth again kind of supporting that, that that kind of more vague statement that those more sign ups than ever before those pretty material acceleration of that metric and then another nice thing is that's that's five billion dollars just for the quarter so that's essentially. Customers giving Amazon money in the future for you know fast kind of quote unquote free services that you know helps Amazon's cash flows which is pretty amazing I don't think we ever see anything quite like that it's kind of like prepaying for products on this you we see subscriptions but you don't see kind of like almost. Soccer is a service type prepayment so then. [9:42] The third party unit share came in at 53 percent of overall units meaning first party was 47% that was steady now what, what that doesn't capture is and I'll talk about this in our deeper analysis is unit volume is not the same as gmv and we'll talk about, so the transactional dollars you could have unit volume kind of flat quarter-on-quarter but you could have a huge surge in the dollar volume because the average order value could go up in three p down in one p there's a lot of things that can change that. The revenue from what they call 3rd party seller services this is largely what they charge sellers use FBA That Grew 31 percent year-over-year and surged, I almost wonder. If they're having a problem keeping up with this demand because they're building out fulfillment capabilities at about a fifteen to twenty percent clip and if the demand for FBA is growing at 30% you know that that's. It's going to be interesting and it will talk about fulfillment side in a second I talked about this being a beat so Revenue came in 2% above the top line which is a I would say a moderate beat but what really surprised everybody was. The operating income it came in 34 percent above the high end of where Wall Street would think so what happened here we'll talk about this in the gnosis so. [11:02] Amazon so this was obviously a big question in Amazon said you know it was overall adoption of the Prime platform due to the new prime one day offering so if you remember in Q2 they started offering one day Prime and this isn't available on every product they're working to get it on more and more products all the time but increasingly you will find products that are available to come in one day. Versus used have to pay a fee for one day delivery anywhere between like three and ten dollars it always varied based on what I saw the. [11:36] Um inside of that Revenue grew 21% year over year to 87 point four billion paid units grew 22%. This gets Wall Street really excited because. Because Amazon has you'll talk about this the cloud computing which is Amazon web services or AWS the ad business you know those things kind of. Could be used to prop up growth and The Core Business which is we would think of as retail could be growing slower. Paid units takes those things out so when paid units accelerates and is growing you know I think you talked about the high-end Mastercard at 18% this is growing faster than kind of what we thought was pretty you know aggressive number that is a really big signal that something has changed and most Wall Street analysts kind of view that as the signal that prime one day has really been a game changer. [12:27] Within their North America grew 22% year over year and International Group 15% another thing that's interesting is North America's well over two thirds of the business now Internationals about one-third so that's how you can have you don't take those numbers and average them North America as growth is able to swap the growth on International incidentally both those were above wall Street's expectations and then you know you and I speak a lot and we always hear that Amazon is not profitable. Well operating income came in at 3.9 billion so that is pretty darn profitable by my calculations Jason you dug into the cloud computing stuff how did that go. Jason: [13:06] Yeah so first caveat you talked about the the rumor that you know people out the talking point that Amazon is not profitable if they don't have that talking point they have this talking point that. Amazon is profitable but exclusively because of AWS which is also annoying and not true but that being said AWS is a darn good business and so they had another good quarter of growth revenue for the quarter was to nine point nine billion which was up 34% from the corridor they're by far the market leader so when you're the market leader and you're growing at 34% that's a pretty good story and it did beat Wall Street expectation. However it is part it is a clear deceleration of the growth so. You know from as far back as i q 1 2017. This this business has been growing 40% or better every single quarter and then Q 2 of this year for the first time at dip below 40 it was 37 percent growth last quarter 35 percent growth this quarter 34 percent growth so it does feel like. The law of large numbers is starting to kick in and and this crazy growth rate is slowing down a little bit but like for any business. This is still great growth in its great growth. [14:34] On a big number and it is highly profitable business and then the other you know thing to keep in mind about this whole AWS service is. The bulk of the the Computing world is still not yet on the cloud right so there's a lot of estimates that you know it's maybe ten to fifteen percent of all compute is on the cloud right now so the. Potential future market for these Services is very large and you know it is. Certainly a challenge for their biggest competitors Google and Microsoft. Interestingly Microsoft reported today and you know they have a competing product called azure and as your you know on a much smaller base is growing much faster so they they dramatically beat Wall Street expectations. Who are Juliana Azure 62 percent growth which also made some news so it's a pretty competitive. Hot cycle but Amazon continues to do a lot to maintain their lead and I think they also rolled out something like a hundred new AWS services this quarter. Scot: [15:46] Yeah there's there's one argument and this is not our purview so I'm not an expert on this but that Microsoft's kind of stuff in The Ballot Box because I think they put Office 365 another cloud computing there's simply kind of taking the office build it kind of license converting it over to cloud and then kind of counting it in that as your number if I understand right. Jason: [16:07] Yeah I think that is potentially true but I'm not actually sure that is stuffing The Ballot Box because of you you know if you think about they. Previously they had to sell those customers on office every. Year and often people didn't upgrade right and so if they're successfully able to migrate all you know a big chunk of customers to Assassin model and they're delivering that from the cloud like that that actually is indicated of of them growing the business so I you know I'm not sure I would call that super nefarious but for sure it helps to have some super popular products like that to Goose your Cloud business. Scot: [16:45] It's not a nefarious it's apples and oranges will agree to disagree. Jason: [16:49] Fair enough okay yeah as as per usual. Scot: [16:51] But you're on how about the ads business Jason. Jason: [16:58] Yeah so this was another I mean I feel like we shouldn't be saying another bright spot because they all seemed like bright spots but so Amazon has this segment of Revenue they call other which is not exclusively but mostly this the advertising business and it was another huge quarter for that the other segment of group 41% to 4.8 billion so you know they were on a run rate to do 10 billion in 2019 and I think with this number they're actually going to have an added it up but I think this actually puts them at like 11 or 12 billion for 2019. Scot: [17:41] Are they I think last time I looked they were passing Snapchat and had a bead on Twitter set that kind of. Jason: [17:47] Nope they passed them both. Scot: [17:49] Okay yep so they just have. Jason: [17:51] They're the third largest digital advertising platform in North America. Scot: [17:56] Yeah those Facebook and Google are so big it's gonna. Jason: [17:59] Yeah yeah we'll talk about that a little bit more in the in the analysis but definitely a good quarter for ads and it's having a ripple effect on the rest of the retail industry. Scot: [18:11] Cope about physical stores. Jason: [18:12] Yeah so this is a new category Amazon had to add after they acquired Whole Foods. And this is down 1% it's about the only thing in the whole earnings report that was down and it was down 1% to 4.4 billion it was also down 1% last quarter. So this is almost exclusively Whole Foods that I think there's like 80 other stores besides the 500 Whole Food stores. [18:42] And it is interesting that it's down again you know normally brick-and-mortar retailers growing at like three or four percent you know Amazon's doing a bunch of interesting things in the whole food stores and and their stores that cater to a relatively affluent customers. Which is you know a segment that has been more resilient so you'd you would kind of expect it to be up. Um and the thing that really kind of skus this number and makes it not all that useful for me is Amazon has aggressively converted those Whole Food stores to home delivery stores so. You know they launched a delivery service out of Whole Foods and they used to charge per delivery or they would. Sell a separate membership they did away with all of that and so you now can get free two-hour delivery from a whole food store and they haven't disclosed how many customers have are regularly using that service but if you use that service you're in their e-commerce sales not in there. They're physical retail sales because they they. [19:45] Attributed based on on where the order is collected and those orders are collected on the web so I suspected we knew what the. The sort of bow purpose and home delivery number was from Whole Foods and added it to this like you know I'm not saying it would be a huge growth but it probably wouldn't be negative but as it is you know they're they're slightly declining in a market with where other Grocers are slightly growing. Scot: [20:12] Yeah that it's interesting too because they've opened up so many of these kind of little bookstores and four-star stores and all that jazz you think that inorganic growth would help this number so it must. Either it's like seriously declining in there having trouble just treading water or to your point there we categorizing it and we there's a one piece of data we can't see to really understand what's going on. Jason: [20:33] Yeah and probably very likely a little of both. Scot: [20:36] Yeah wrinkle so then that was that captures kind of the highlights of fourth quarter 2019 now let's look forward again a Wall Street thing is you give guidance so companies give a range of how they think things are going to go. And they did a beat and raised on guidance so revenue for the first quarter of 2020 was guided to above analysts and. Amazon says 73 billion at a a midpoint if they get that would be twenty two percent growth they're essentially saying look The New Normal is 22 percent growth so buckle up. So that's going to be interesting there in Amazon's historically somewhat conservative so there could almost be I won't see ya shot that maybe like 25% I don't know you get the sense that they are seeing something in the data from prime one day and that is a game changer and really. Almost changing the business. But that being said it was a little mixed because margins were muted and guidance and they were very careful to call out exactly why in all. Pick that apart when we go into the analysis side Wall Street brush that off they effectively said look, you guys have shown us that this is paying off this investment in prime one day we're comfortable with you continuing to do that and in Amazon's got really good about articulating. [21:59] How much they're spending where it's going and what's really interesting about it is it's kind of forever dollars which is nice so effectively capex investing into new things that will be used for years and years so. So then another area of investment that they specifically called out as India there's a lot of press Jeff Bezos was in India you've probably seen the pictures of him wearing kind of a funky jacket and doing like a lots of fun things in India it's a huge market for them and announced they're going to invest a billion dollars, don't think they put a time frame on this I kind of mentally. Wrapped it up to 2020 but it could go beyond that certainly not going to be 1/4 that's a according to emarketer that's a two hundred billion dollar a year in five years area that's growing really rapidly and then Amazon again kind of in a uncustomary way they. [22:50] Put out some data around that market they said they have 550,000 sellers now sixty thousand of those export products and then they've created 700,000 jobs kind of amongst their three peas in India there there exclusively third party so they don't have a first party kind of business and they've created those 700,000 jobs since their 2013 launch. They did announce a huge investment fulfillment centers will talk about in the end now section and then based on all this data and the results of Q4 analysts nudge their price range is up between 2275 and 2500 I saw some a little bit higher than that but that seems to be kind of where everyone's clustering in that that section so again they kind of ended the day at 2008 I think they only have to get up to 2100 to be in the trillion dollar Club so and I'll start expecting that they will get there and stay there. [23:44] So those are the results we did the set up heading into this this announcement the highlights now let's really dig into what this means and do it dig that deep dive on it I wanted to spend some time talking about this prime one day so so one way to think about Amazon is it's a capital intensive business because of fulfillment center parts of it. Unlike eBay so eBay is a pure digital business they don't have fulfillment centers or delivery trucks or anything like that they may have some office space but other than that it's pure digital business and what's interesting is Amazon has now kind of shown to Wall Street look we're gonna go into these invest modes and we're going to invest heavily against something that we think is going to work but then we're going to have a harvest mode and that's what gets Wall Street really excited because when they have these Harvest modes Wall Street is typically perpetually surprised where I surprised investment works and then they're surprised by how much profitability comes out of that Harvest so I would characterize that is what's going on here so Amazon again started in Q2. And what they did is they said they announced prime one day they said we're going to announce 800 million in that quarter and then in Q3 announced about a billion and then in Q4 they've now announced that they spent one and a half billion all on prime one day. [25:03] So you throw all that together and you get about a four to five billion dollar investment in this new initiative that seems that's a really big number and it's very easy to be skeptical on that but now we're seeing that 22% paid units number accelerate nicely so Rin that entering that Harvest mode and what Wall Street analysts are thinking is once we kind of lap Q2 that those investments will taper off the infrastructure for Prime Monday will have largely been built they'll still be some more but maybe it's going to be like 500 million kind of level of investing and then we're going to hit this really big Harvest Motes that's what's got everyone excited. [25:43] Where does that dollars goes when we say four to five billion dollars where does it go it's all in shipping infrastructure so it's more fulfillment centers one of the big things about so if you think about this supply chain the end of the supply chain the the start I guess in the supply chain is the Fulfillment center so the products being there for consumers then a then that then you have the consumers primarily a residence so in the middle the two important pieces where I think the bulk of investment are going is sortation centers so to be able to ship all this stuff one day you have to sort it into not only zip codes but zip plus 4 so that you can get it on a truck that's going to do a very tight route and be super efficient so Amazon's invested heavily in that so used to be they didn't have any like five years ago they had very few sortation centers there were relying on the USPS FedEx and UPS for that function so now they've built out that and then they've also built out the trucks I go to work every morning I have about a 30-minute commute and I probably see 30 Amazon Prime trucks on one of the major highways here in this area so. Jason: [26:45] And those are just trucks following you to deliver. Scot: [26:47] Yeah like slow down we're trying to give you all your packages so you know. So again this amazing amount of investment and then what's also interesting is they build these things but then they you know. They're going to last for very long time you know fulfillment centers last for presumably 10 plus years they the insides frequently have to be updated but you know the big kind of the pad the walls all that stuff in the sortation centers I think that technology lasting longer and of course trucks last a relatively long time so so what they're building is they already had more infrastructure than anyone else and they are just kind of like. Quadrupling down on that infrastructure so so. That's kind of what prime one day means and then you know my other point on it is consumers love it so consumers are buying more and more frequently and signing up for Prime because they love the one prime one day feature. Jason: [27:46] Yeah and I mean I the way I think about it like that faster delivery service does mean they win more orders against other eCommerce sites so you know maybe you ordered something from Amazon instead of Walmart because it will arrive faster but also it just entices households to order more stuff online that they previously might have ordered or purchased in a store and so like it you know they're not just stealing share from competitors like they're actually like increasing. They're addressable market so. Scot: [28:23] Yeah good point. Jason: [28:26] So that that is very strong the. Question I get asked a lot about Amazon lately when I visit other retailers is around the ads the. [28:41] You know as we've already highlighted a little and we'll talk about more Amazon has this Rich echo system and everything feeds on everything else and so you know increasingly Amazon has this great Diversified Revenue. [28:55] Echo System right and all these different places they make money and you know all the all these Services they make money on that support the retail business like FBA fulfillment all these new things if you're a traditional retailer that you know is just has e-commerce with all those other services it's really difficult to be profitable. And so in general when we look at you know a omni-channel retailer that you know they generally have separate accounting for their e-commerce business and that e-commerce business generally isn't profitable or certainly. It's less profitable than their brick-and-mortar business and so you know most retailers are looking for ways, to improve profitability and then you see wait a minute you know Amazon's building this huge highly profitable advertising business, on top of the retail business. So estimates are right now that that Amazon's ad business is about 9% of All Digital ads. And so to put that in perspective Google is currently I'm sorry Facebook is currently at. 22% and Google is it 36 percent so Amazon's already the second largest Advertiser the forecasts are of course for Amazon to gonna grow much faster than those other so. So the 20:23 forecast is. [30:19] Amazon at 14% Facebook at 20% and Google at 31 percent so that you know they're potentially getting much closer to the size of these other. Big guys and they have a ton of other revenue streams that these other big guys don't have in General ad sales is highly profitable because. The cost of goods sold is almost negligible. And so if you're Walmart or Target or any retailer in you're struggling for profitability on e-commerce and you look at Amazon you go man I need to get some of that lucrative advertising business to supplement my business as well and so we've actually seen a bunch of other retailers. Invest more effort in their own sight monetization efforts or their own retail media efforts and, Walmart used to Outsource ad sales to a company called Triad and they fired Triad and and built an internal team they have now launched a bunch of Their Own Self Service apis so that you can programmatically by ads on Walmart. Target you know double down on. They're their ad sales team and they now call it R and L Kroger bought a division of dum-dum humby and rebranded and they have this hole. Precision marketing thing but I'll be honest at the moment. [31:42] Like obviously none of these these retailers have close to the traffic or eyeballs that Amazon does so they're you know they're certainly not getting the same kind of share and at the moment all the dollars that every other retailer is getting in their ad program. [31:57] Um are what I call Trade dollars which means sort of your the. Frito-Lay sales team at Walmart and Walmart agrees to buy you know a billion dollars of free delay and Fritos and part of the trade agreement when Walmart agrees to buy all this Fritos is that Frito-Lay will kick in. Some advertising dollars and historically those dollars might have been used in a store circular or an in cap or some kind of sampling program in the store and increasingly, those trade dollars are getting used for digital ads on Walmart.com but those dollars are all being paid by the sales team you know that sells stuff at Walmart and what's unique about Amazon's ad sales is they're not just getting trade dollars there's a lot of Chief marketing officers that have a budget to build their brand and they're deciding to take dollars that they used to invest in Google and Facebook and put those dollars in into Amazon because there's a lot of eyeballs there with a lot of high buying intent and so at the moment, it feels like. Like a huge Advantage for Amazon that they're getting these these incremental dollars and other retailers are are trying but really not being successful to sort of follow suit. Scot: [33:17] Yeah it's interesting I get your point on there being no cost of goods I would say I've had more random people that aren't in our industry complain about the searchability and findability on Amazon lately and I think it's the ads kind of you know so I think there is a quote-unquote cost of goods maybe maybe a better call it a cost of consume user experience or something. I do worry that it feels like we may have crossed over a point where the ad load is too high and it's kind of confused the buying experience and then you know there's been a lot of negative press around counterfeits Bad actors those folks are going to be very aggressive on the ads because they you know they presumably have better margins than anyone because they're selling a product that is counterfeit thus doesn't have the normal. Price structure of a real good so it's gonna be interesting to see is there a point where. Windows Amazon say hmm your customer experience is suffering from the ad load. Jason: [34:17] Yeah no for sure if you're a business that just sells ads so you know that's almost the exclusive revenue of Google or Facebook you know there's this, this like familiar pattern they like create some organic benefit that gets a bunch of eyeballs to come and they trick people in a building an audience there by giving them free eyeballs and then they increasingly take away all the organic visibility and make you pay for visibility right so used to be you could have funny interesting content on Facebook and people would see it now you know nobody's going to see anything on Facebook unless you pay an ad for it and that that's not the world's greatest customer experience but it it kind of works if you're exclusively an ad platform but in Amazon's case where they're trying to provide all these other customer benefits you're exactly right it absolutely roads the customer experience as more and more of the pixels on the first page of search results are paid for pixels instead of organic pixels and a lot of people point to that as the most obvious deviation from Amazon's stated goal of being the most customer-centric company on the planet is you know when you asked for Duracell batteries in you use and you get an ad you know that takes up half the screen for for amazonbasics Batteries like you're clearly not being customer-centric. Scot: [35:40] Yeah yeah it's gonna be interesting to see and then another interesting thing is whenever I talk to folks and say well we're a shopping target comes up a lot so I don't know if there's something about the Target demographic that really doesn't like those those add load but you know in my mind this is like maybe the I don't know if I'd call it an Achilles heel it's like a little tiny microscopic. Spot on a hill. Jason: [36:01] And Mark Lori did an interview at the code Commerce show asked her which would have been like September and he specifically called it out he's like look we're gonna lean heavily in the ad sales and we want to improve our our site monetization Revenue but we aren't going to do is compromise the customer experience the way some other people did and he didn't he didn't name them but it was pretty obvious he was talking about Amazon. Scot: [36:26] Some large book stores in Seattle. One of my favorite topics is gross merchandise value or gmv longtime listeners will be aware of this but bear with me so when Amazon reports their revenue it includes only their revenue their derivative revenue or their take rate from the third party sales so if Jason sells $100 Star Wars toy on the third-party Marketplace Amazons Blended take rate is about 15% so Amazon so while Jason you know sold a hundred dollar widget and presumably Target and Walmart lost out on that hundred dollar widget Amazon's revenue is only $15 from that so so there's this hidden transactional value in Amazon that makes Amazon actually larger than you would think it is so let's do put some numbers on this Amazon's revenue for 2019 was 280 billion. Of that 87 billion was in the fourth quarter I used to have my own analysis of this and thankfully the Wall Street analysts do this now so I'm going to quote Ron Josie who's an analyst at JMP Securities Amazon now gives you enough data to kind of back into this number where I had to you some assumptions so the. [37:45] So when you unpack the gmv fourth quarter total gmv was a hundred and eighty billion so just shy of about 2X and then the annual gmv was 569 billion again compared to revenue of 280 billion so what happens in there is 28 billion of that 280 is third party that you have to gross it up about. Eight times to actually get the DMV this is important because I think that's the Apples to Apples comparison for how Amazon's doing in our industry revenues important and. And whatnot but to really so when Macy's or Walmart or any other retailer reports Revenue it's a hundred percent DMV. [38:26] Asterix and let's have a Marketplace and they're going to do the same thing but they don't have marketplaces that are 53 percent of their business so there there is a little bit of space under that Iceberg but Amazon's is massive it's almost twice as large so so I think that 569 billion number for 2019 is the right number that's the transactional value that went through Amazon this excludes AWS excludes ads Etc so Amazon's impact is twice what you think it is and that gmv actually grew faster it grew at 26%. And that's because I think the physical stores and so that other stuff kind of ways on that growth metric if we if we you and I kind of share a chart I guess I forget which was actually created so we'll split it split the baby where we show a lot of people feel like Amazon's not as big as Walmart well if you that look at GM V again Amazon's 2019 gmv 569 billion Walmart trailing 12 is about five hundred twenty billion so I would argue that Amazon is now ten percent larger than Walmart on an apples-to-apples basis. [39:31] One more tidbit there and then we'll dig into the Fulfillment center is first party is growing pretty slow at about ten percent year-over-year again this is dollars not unit so it's really interesting because the doll at the gmv from 3p is going very slow but the units are holding steady and what I think is happening is you have a lot of these kind of Kindle units in Amazon music units just kind of like these one and two dollar kinds of things whereas in the 3p you're seeing big screen TVs and really big kind of priced items so so we don't see it in the unit volume but we are seeing it in the gmv mix third-party grew gmv grew 26 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter so. So you know any thoughts on that Jays agree disagree. Jason: [40:15] Yeah no I generally agree and I think like not only is that that 3p Marketplace a big deal it's like a again intrinsically it, it's going to be more profitable than a 1p business because once again you don't have cost of goods right and so there's way less risk against your capital and and they never reported profitability separate from their 3p sales if they did. It's totally viable that this looks like a Better profitability Business than AWS would and these days they even have a huge accelerator like not only is the the 3p huge and growing. A bunch of the services that Amazon is wildly profitable delivering their primarily delivering to 3p sellers so you know the FBA premium Analytics like all of the advertising like they're all tools to help 3p sellers be more successful and they make money on all those services so it's a. Um you know even if you took AWS completely out of Amazon they're you know they're still is this. Secret highly profitable business model within the Retail Group segment and it's the biggest part of the retail sales. Scot: [41:44] Wrinkle about any thoughts on fulfillment. Jason: [41:48] Yeah so in my mind like. The two overwhelming moats that Amazon has these two huge competitive advantages that are extremely difficult for any retailer to overcome is. The Prime membership and that whole flywheel and the other is this insurmountable investment they've made in fulfillment centers and you talked about this a lot in the in the prime one-day section but you know they announced that they're going to build something like why. 47 new fulfillment centers in. Again it's hard to talk about logistics buildings anymore because they have so many different types right like they have these huge cavernous fulfillment centers which are the most expensive thing and as you mentioned increasingly they have all these these various hubs and sortation centers and delivery stations and things they add on top of that but. Super oversimplify if we just talked about fulfillment centers Amazon has a hundred and sixty six of those in North America that are operating right now. [42:58] The next biggest Ecommerce provider if you count super generously you might say Walmart has 20. So like they're they're an order of magnitude fewer fewer centers and then you know Amazon plans to build 47 more which is. You know more than double what anyone else even has and so you know to me it's they've been taking all the cash. That they generate from this business and they've been making these Investments and as you point out these are investments that are going to pay dividends. For ten plus years and they make it totally viable for Amazon to increase the quality of their services right so that you know the most obvious example is they could promise customers much faster deliveries and you know they had. To make some investments in that they kind of missed their guidance last quarter primarily because of the these unforeseen costs and so I like to talk about you know one day delivery was hard for Amazon and and they gave themselves a cold by doing it but they gave the all of their competitors the coronavirus because. Nobody else was in a position to do to do ever anything like one day and you know it's much more expensive and much more difficult and so you know we've seen retards like. [44:20] Walmart or Target kind of promised one day to match it but there are really only matching it on a tiny percentage of the skews that that Amazon offers so this is a super important super powerful. Competitive advantage. [44:37] They do spend an awful lot of money delivering stuff to people so you know a line item they do have in in their earnings report is that that. Fulfillment costs and it was up 43%. Year over year so they this quarter they spent twelve point nine billion dollars on delivery it was up huge last quarter to it was up 46% so this is the fastest growing cost they have. But you know increasingly that that investment is. In making things more optimal by delivering themselves rather than relying on you ups and u.s. post office. So you know there was that Morgan Stanley report that came out late last year and it had two pretty impressive factoids in it number one it said. That Amazon may already be delivering more than fifty percent of its own volume um so instead of relying on USPS and and UPS more than half the packages they ship you know are now being delivered by their own Amazon Logistics which is. Part of the only way they could they could do that one day delivery and the Morgan Stanley report says you know you game this out and you forecast by 2022 Amazon will be delivering more Parcels than UPS or FedEx. [45:56] So this is a you know just another huge huge moat that Amazon has against every other. Competitor and you know it's it's having a material impact now on the traditional carriers like FedEx and UPS. Scot: [46:15] Yet the Fed Ex gave FedEx CEO Fred Smith he's kind of legendary entrepreneur he's been at this for like 50 years something like that since he was in his 20s they had an interview with him and I saw a lot of people kind of online. Mocking his approach and I think they were misreading it so what he said was effectively my read on it was the they had to pick sides right so they realized the Amazon was going to be a competitor. They chose to not not kind of continue to do business with competitor but now they're more aligned with omnichannel retailers and he feels like. [46:52] That's going to be a winning strategy and that they will be able to get back on track and become larger than ups and, better than their he didn't say it outright is that because UPS has chosen other path of continuing to partner with Amazon at some point Amazon will yank that volume, in these networks live on volume right because if you can build all this infrastructure you got to keep it busy and utilize and then. That will allow them to catapult forward there is some evidence to support this I saw a lot of people say oh you know FedEx is going to save them all that's ridiculous well I think it's pretty clear. [47:24] What do you think of which omni-channel guys need FedEx either in a partnership or even, in an MMA to your point about Walmart having 24 filament centers FedEx could help them keep up with and maybe even pass Amazon's capabilities I don't I don't have that broken down like like you know we talked about there with Amazon's fulfillment centers but you know they have a substantial infrastructure across from fulfillment centers for Tatian centers both in ground and air and then obviously trucks and planes so I think that's kind of what he was talking about is really more partnering with a Target and Walmart maybe both of those guys and providing an alternative to Amazon. If I'm FedEx UPS I kind of personally think that's the right strategy because you know you partner with Amazon clearly is going to be race to death I think maybe they'll give you some volume the least profitable stuff but I just don't see it as a winning winning strategy what are your thoughts and I know you you kind of Drew straws and I got FedEx and you got UPS I'd love to hear what you're thinking what you. Jason: [48:28] So they just just to pile on the FedEx thing like there are some ridiculous things that Fred Smith has said in the past about this base like you know two or three years ago I think he called the notion that Amazon could be a meaningful. Logistics company Fantastical and I you know I think he's pretty clearly wrong there but I agree with you you know. This year their plan to sort of you know move completely away from Amazon like is not a bad move because both. FedEx and UPS have constrained capacity like they sell all the trips that they can make. And there are more e-commerce is growing faster than their capacity is growing so when you have a constraint supply of something you want to get the most money you possibly can for that. And the way you get the most money is not go to the biggest customer that has the most elaborate and negotiates the lowest rates right so FedEx can you know better maximize its capacity by partnering with these people. That need it more than Amazon needs it so that like that seems like entirely. Smart strategy on FedEx's part I would I would say and then there was this little I don't know how much of it was real versus Tit for Tat but you know there's this small service that's. People talk about but it's not very large yet and I you're going to remind me what the vernacular is but vendor fulfilled Prime. Scot: [49:55] Yes seller fulfilled Prime and then in their the seller can choose which. Jason: [49:59] Yeah so in that scenario you don't put your goods in. [50:04] In Amazon's fulfillment Network you keep your goods in your own warehouse and you promised Amazon that you're going to deliver them within the terms of prime shipping and Amazon has to certify you for this and around holiday this year they said hey if you want to stay certified for so fulfilled Prime you can't ship your packages via FedEx. [50:26] FedEx on time delivery rate is too low for to meet our high standards and so they turned off at X in the peak of holiday and then they they turned it back on and they alleged that that's a data-driven decision but it certainly got a lot of Buzz so slightly contrasting this like UPS has continued to be a big partner of Amazon's and you know they are the third largest provider to Amazon so of Amazon's the biggest second biggest is the post office third-biggest is UPS and the you know the thing you have to remember about UPS and FedEx is they both built their businesses primarily to deliver stuff to offices right so you drive a truck to an office and you get to drop off 30 boxes when you drive a truck to a house and only get to drop off one box it's way less efficient so FedEx and UPS although they're trying to improve were built for commercial deliveries not residential deliveries and that's where the US Post Office really comes in as they're good at these residential deliveries. [51:35] And for your point as Amazon builds out more of their own capability that more and more of their likely you know taking the the efficient deliveries themselves that they can make the most money on and giving the the bad deliveries too. To the their partners and you know their Partners like price their services based on and having them profitable mix and so like that's another way that. [51:59] That this whole business probably hurts hurts the UPS is of the world but we are seeing UPS. Add some interesting e-commerce friendly services so I've noticed three big announcements this this month UPS is going to a seven-day-a-week delivery and they're adding a ton of weekend delivery capacity which again when you were. Primarily delivering you know contracts to businesses. Businesses weren't open on the weekend so weekends weren't important but now that you're doing e-commerce the weekends are potentially the most important delivery days. They are UPS is also making a big investment in rural delivery infrastructure which you know we just mentioned is something Amazon's are likely to need. More help with for longer and then they also this week announced this new technology that they're rolling out that they called Dynamic routes. And essentially what that means is they're using AI every morning to decide. Where that that truck driver goes right so that driver you know in one shift is likely going to stop at a hundred locations to do deliveries. And in the old world like they you know do ever do the hunt same hundred locations in the same order every day and now that's going to be. Sort of optimized using artificial intelligence to save gas and optimize the amount of deliveries they can. [53:24] So we are seeing them try to do more e-commerce Centric stuff. [53:30] You know I would point out and argue if you're Walmart and you get make a huge partnership with FedEx and Amazon is primarily now relying on their own delivery infrastructure. [53:43] That is still a huge advantage to Amazon because. By the fact that they own it it's much easier for them to change and improve their own service so if. Amazon decides customers really like being able to track the driver and know that the drivers half an hour away from your house they can do that if Amazon finds out the customers really want a picture of the box when it's delivered so they can see where in their building it is that they can do that they can add all kinds of customer-friendly services if Amazon wants that driver to pick up returns they can do that but if you're Walmart in you're paying FedEx to provide all these Services you have a lot less control over sort of Designing and improving your own product so. Again yet another big big Edge to our friends in Seattle. Scot: [54:34] Two last things on fulfillment here in and we're spending time on this because we think you'll see when we do this kind of put the bow on things why we think this is so important but number one FedEx has a market cap of thirty four point seven billion Walmart is 30 324 so it's. It would be a big one but it's not outside the realm of possibility it's not like they're equals UPS is 88 billion so that one's kind of out of the realm for someone like a Walmart or Target to acquire. [55:04] And I think that's kind of where this is going to have to go maybe you know there's there's a corporate strategy there's a whole thing why buy a cow if you just have the milk so maybe there's no need for them to buy these things but. And maybe some Walmart I'm okay as long as you're not doing Amazon I'm okay sharing that infrastructure with Target effectively so that's gonna be interesting to watch the other thing I wanted to bring up is the challenge that the carriers have this is the same for UPS FedEx and USPS is residential deliveries they've tried for kind of each individually 20-plus years with the smartest route optimization and sortation. To get the stops per truck up and there have been range bound to between 70 and 80 stops a day so so that's kind of the capacity of the system is really driven by how many stops in a residential delivery can a truck make here's how Amazon solves that, we mentioned at the top a hundred and fifty Prime subscribers now a hundred million of those are you in the United States there's something like 200 million households so the way to get the stops for truck up is if you're stopping at every other house right because you know I don't know the data but I imagine you know you could probably. [56:18] 4X that stops so I bet these Prime trucks are making you know certainly double that if not triple that so they could be making 200 stops in fact I bet that it has changed the dynamic and it's really just how much each truck can hold. Because I think the stops have gone so high because they've got the Loyalty program where they're delivering stuff to every house every other house essentially not every day but it's enough that it really dramatically solves this this routings. Stops per truck problem. Jason: [56:49] Yeah all true I will say well you know we talked about there being like a slight negative that other people could attack the one incremental headache that Amazon inherits by having their own Logistics delivery capability is you know they're now getting a lot of negative press for like you know having all these. You know there's this high pressure on all these drivers to maximize their deliveries and get everywhere as quick as they can and so there's a bunch of, Amazon employees and independent contractors working on Amazon's behalf, driving unsafely on the roads and you know potentially hitting people and causing accidents and even deaths and I think it was disclosed. Not too recently that like this happened a while ago but the the first CFO of Amazon apparently was. Actually killed walking across the street and he was hit, via Amazon delivery driver so the company literally killed their first CFO. Scot: [57:55] I think that was a woman. Jason: [57:57] It was a woman you're right. Scot: [57:59] Jennifer something yeah. Jason: [58:00] Yeah it's super sad story but so they're going to have to deal with that like I you know I don't know people remember but in the 90s all the pizza delivery companies used a promise 30-minute deliveries and you know that created the the same problem and they sort of figured out how to manage it so I kind of suspect Amazon will as well. Scot: [58:18] Cool so we've gone through the setup we went through the results and then our analysis now we're going to conclude by kind of giving you an action item so so we're trying to say all right we're going to put ourselves in our listeners shoes a lot of this may seem a little scary if you're a retailer even if you're a brand what do you think about this so so here's my take my conclusion is prime one day is a complete Game Changer and it took his kind of a year to figure this out but it's really showing up now number one customers love it. Number two it's a knockout punch to competitors you talked about it increasing the addressable Market which is great but people are you know competitors already can't do two day Prime now they're up against one day Prime what's next same day Prime you know I think this infrastructure can largely be used for all that stuff to the number 3 it is effectively. Kind of already paying for all this shipping and structure so so again I think it's paying for itself right now and it's gonna be around for four five to ten years plus so [59:20] Also Amazon it's offered on a small number of skus so I think there's going to be two to three years where they're going to be able to expand the number of skus that are there available in prime one day and then that will get them 20% plus growth for two or three years long enough to find the next Catalyst for an acceleration maybe that same day Prime maybe they figure out growth tree Alexa ads they have so many so many irons in the fire they have a really good chance of finding that next big thing so the action item is I think retailers need to really. Kind of take action on this for this holiday holiday of 2020 we have a lot of time thinking this and really start figuring out. Can you partner with UPS or FedEx to offer one day and what's that going to be like and. How do you build that out because it's clear consumers love it and it's clear Amazon has invested massively in this and will continue to do so based on the results Jason what was your conclusion and action items. Jason: [1:00:17] Yeah so I mean I think at the highest level they've they've established these two dominant modes Prime and they're their fulfillment capability and I think this point no retailer strategy should try to be to catch up with him and go head-to-head with him on either of those two things I think just the idea of trying to be in everything store and ship hundreds of millions of products and the in the same day to any us consumer in competition with Amazon is a lost cause at this point and so you know if you're a retailer you need to think about the white space that that Amazon's decisions has created for you right and so you know that you've got to think about. [1:01:02] Products and services that benefit from the fact that you have this brick-and-mortar footprint right and I see Target in particular doing a really good job of leveraging the store I know I talk about grocery a lot but groceries a perfect example you know groceries never you know bananas are never going to live in all these giant fulfillment centers and get delivered through the sort ations a center and all that to the consumer there probably always going to get delivered from a store or micro fulfillment center so you know if I'm Walmart in particular but any big retailer you know groceries one of the categories I want to try to win from Walmart I really want to think about services that customers want that might make the Fulfillment centers obsolete right so you know what's not very good if you're if you own 200 fulfillment centers that have billions of dollars of inventory in it is if consumers stop buying off-the-rack products and start ordering products that have to be made to order or personalized to order suddenly all that fulfillment infrastructure isn't so valuable so if I'm any other retailer I might be winning in a personalized products if a lot of these products shift to Auto fulfillment the ability to ship really fast and quickly may not be quite so important so if I'm another retailer I'm leaning into that and you know for sure I'm doing things like. [1:02:29] Thinking about using my customer base to design my own products and sell stuff that Amazon can't sell because you know competing with Amazon by selling other people's stuff I think is just going to be. Increasingly unviable for almost anyone and that's my shtick. Scot: [1:02:51] I totally agree. Jason: [1:02:52] Awesome well it has happened again we've gotten slightly over our allotted time but I feel like this is a. Particularly important event in our year and it's well worth the time that listeners spent sort of get their arms around all the various things that are going on in Amazon and as usual if you have any questions or comments. Hit us up on Twitter or visit our Facebook page and you know it's time to get some fresh five star reviews so I know I say this every time. But seriously it'll take you ten seconds jump over to iTunes and give us that that five-star review because we need we need some 20/20 reviews not those those older views from those of you that have been with us for a long time so appreciate you doing that. Scot: [1:03:42] Except when we hope you enjoyed this new kind of format for an Amazon quarterly result where we do have a little bit deeper and if you have any feedback positive or negative we'd love to hear. Jason: [1:03:53] And until next time happy commercing.

For episode 15 of Dear Diaspora, I had the pleasure of interviewing Luper Akough, co-founder of Clout Enterprises, a logistics company that delivers packages for Amazon Logistics.   After a successful career in the insurance industry, Luper was ready for a new challenge and responded to a call for Amazon delivery partners. After a few rounds of interviews, he was selected and became an official Amazon Delivery Service Partner. Within 30 days, Clout Enterprises had 35 employees, and ran 15-20 routes a day!   Tune in to hear about how Luper secured the Amazon deal, what it’s like to work with his co-founder (and wife), and how he diversifies his income by investing in real estate.   “Start where you are with what you have, and you can always build and change later.” – Luper Akough   Resources mentioned in this:   Clout Enterprises: http://cloutenterprises.com Clout Enterprises Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clout-Enterprises-1962689464036986/ Amazon Partnership: https://www.omaha.com/money/retail/amazon-s-sarpy-county-facility-is-part-of-its-plan/article_5b981cae-d879-5279-85d5-f0cbf2e566c7.html?fbclid=IwAR39iNPPTksZU1tNtKZhn8yXHr6_yBEZKdGzOSyE3N8gQcMS37Vb_qTEdfo Info About House Hacking: https://www.coachcarson.com/house-hacking-guide/#1

In Episode 8 des ‘‘Der Conversion-Hacker Podcast'' erklärt Ihnen Deutschlands Top-Conversion-Hacker Jörg Dennis Krüger am Beispiel vom E-Commerce Riesen Amazon, wie Sie Ihren Kundenservice optimieren können, um Ihre Kunden dauerhaft glücklich zu machen. TRANSKRIPTION DIESER FOLGE DES PODCASTS Herzlich willkommen zum Conversion-Hacking Podcast! Mein Name ist Jörg Dennis Krüger und wie mein Personaltrainer gerade richtig gesagt hat: Ja, ich bin der Conversion-Hacker! Mein Thema heute ist der Erzfeind aller Online-Shops. Der Antichrist des E-Commerce, das große, amerikanische Kaufhaus: Amazon. Für viele Online-Händler ist das gleichzeitig der Retter, wie auch der finale Todesstoß. Man kann schnell auf Amazon Reichweite kriegen und Produkte verkaufen, aber Amazon greift sich immer einen größeren Marktanteil und verdrängt die kleineren Händler. So könnte man zumindest denken. Aber Amazon macht das ja, ja gut ein bisschen aus der Strategie heraus, dass Amazon in neue Technologien investiert und dass Amazon jetzt erstmal lange Zeit keine wirklichen Gewinne machen wollte. Und jetzt kann man noch sagen, ja Amazon beutet Mitarbeiter aus und zahlt gar nicht genug und so weiter. Auch wenn ich ja vielleicht ein bisschen skeptisch bin, ob der normale Lagerarbeiter bei einem kleineren, mittelgroßen Online-Shop mehr oder weniger kriegt als bei Amazon. Das hängt wahrscheinlich stark vom Unternehmen ab und so weiter. Aber, Amazon ist auf jeden Fall ein riesiger Wettbewerber. Aber wie es Amazon dahin gekommen? Wenn wir uns die Frage stellen und die Frage beantworten, dann wissen wir wie wir unseren Online-Shop erfolgreicher machen und wie wir gegen Amazon bestehen können. Denn gegen Amazon zu bestehen ist aus meiner Sicht gar nicht so schwer. Denn warum bestell auch ich ab und an und das ganz gerne bei Amazon? Also, ich bestelle sehr, sehr gerne bei kleineren Online-Shops, wo ich halt weiß, die haben schönere Auswahl, da kenne ich die Leute auch vielleicht und wo ich die Produkte finde und Preis spielt da gar nicht so die große Rolle. Preis spielt für mich auf Amazon auch gar nicht so die große Rolle. Bei Amazon bin ich so einer, genauso wie viele, viele, viele andere die gucken nur auf eins: Die gucken nämlich auf: "ist da ein kleines Prime-Symbol dran?". Und viele Produkte - per Prime - sind teurer, als wenn ich sie nicht per Prime kaufe. Prime, grad bei etwas günstigeren Produkten, bedeutet meistens einen Preisaufschlag. Und was bedeutet Prime? Prime bedeutet das Produkt wird schnell geliefert, häufig schon am nächsten Tag. Amazon sagt mir ziemlich genau, wann es geliefert wird. Prime bedeutet aber auch: Das Produkt wird in den meisten Fällen von Amazon verkauft und ich kann den Amazon Kundenservice in Anspruch nehmen. Und da haben wir die beiden, spannenden Dinge, die letztendlich dafür sorgen, dass Amazon so beliebt ist. Schnelle Lieferung und hervorragender Kundenservice. Günstig ist Amazon gar nicht unbedingt. Vielleicht auch, wollen sie natürlich sein, aber ich kenne viele, viele, viele Gegenbeispiele, wo die eigentlichen Shops günstiger sind. Und Amazon ist auch gar nicht besonders toll zu bedienen. Ja, hat so ein bisschen diesen Warenhaus Vorteil, dass sich irgendwie alles da kriege, am Ende aber auch 25 Päckchen aus 23 Lagern und so, das ist jetzt auch nicht mehr dieser große Vorteil, dass ich sage okey, ich bestell jetzt alles bei einem Anbieter, dann kommt nur einmal der Paketbote und fertig. Nein, nein es sind eigentlich diese beiden Dinge: Lieferzeit und Kundenservice. Wenn ich mit Amazon Sendungen Probleme, habe dann habe ich eigentlich kein Problem. Letztens hier Amazon Lieferung nicht angekommen. Keine Ahnung auf dem Zettel von DHL, oder was Amazon Logistics keine Ahnung stand drauf: “Beim Nachbarn abgegeben sogar mit dem Namen vom Nachbarn.” Fein hingegangen, Nachbar sagt: "Bei mir war keiner." Gut, ich bei Amazon angerufen: “Freunde was geht?” Die haben gesagt: "Ja,

Die EU geht dem Antitrust-Vorwurf von Spotify gegen Apple nach; wenig überraschend aber mit potenziell (und absehbar) großen Auswirkungen. Amazon kommt bei seinen Logistikanstrengungen zumindest in den USA erstaunlich schnell voran. China baut eine neue Autobahn mit dedizierten Spuren für selbstfahrende Autos und in Deutschland gibt’s mal wieder ein neues Manifest: #HeyEuropa. Links zu den...

EP164 - News live from ICSC OAC  http://jasonandscot.com Jason & Scot gave a presentation at the International Council of Shopping Centers Open Air Centers show in Austin Texas and got together afterward to record a news update. Amazon Project Zero - New brand protection program Walmart Earnings.  Same store sales up 4.2%, E-Com for the quarter up 43% (up 40% for the fiscal year), guidance for next year is that e-com will grow 35%.  Profitability of e-commerce continues to be a challenge for Walmart, and they expect that to continue.   Walmart stores offering "Online Grocery Pickup" (OGP)_ grew from 800 to 2100 stores this year, and is expected to grow to 3100 next year. JCPenneys Earnings. Revenue down 8.4%, same store sales down -4% (vs. 4.3% expected).  They announced the closure of 18 stores, and said to expect more in subsequent years). L Brands Earnings - Victoria's Secret same store sales down 7%, will close 53 stores. FedEx launched a new delivery robot, SameDay Bot Stamps.com dropped it's exclusive deal with USPS, a possible precursor to an Amazon partnership (or acquisition). Target launched Target Plus, a new invite only marketplace to expand Targets online assortment. Marketplace software vendor Mirikl announced a new $70M fund raise, reflecting investor confidence in the marketplace model. Jason will be at ShopTalk in Las Vegas next week and will moderate two panels: MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2019 TRACK 4, SESSION 4: 2:50PM - 3:30PM TOPIC: Selling on Marketplaces John Evons, VP, Global Direct-to-Consumer, KEEN Bridget Davies, VP, Revenue & Seller Growth EBay Jordan Bass, Head of eCommerce, The Wonderful Company TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019 TRACK 2, SESSION 5: 3:35PM - 4:15PM TOPIC: Creating a Single View of the Customer Charlie Cole, Chief Ecommerce Officer, Samsonite Steve Miller, SVP, Marketing & eCommerce, JOANN Stores Greg Fancher, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Express Jason and Scot will be giving a joint presentation (and recording a live show) from ChannelAdvisor Connect in Austin on April 8th and 9th. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 164 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, February 28th, 2019. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 164 being recorded on Thursday February 28th 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host, Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Alright alright alright hey Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners we are joining you live live live in the same room which rarely happens and we are here in Austin Texas at the icsc OAC conference. Jason: [0:57] That is a mouthful very impressive specially with Matthew McConaughey standing right behind you. Scot: [1:02] Yeah yes sir this is a conference that will you put her on and I have all it I'll let you introduce the conference. Jason: [1:09] So I think icsc is a Trade Organization for shopping centers and this particular event is about the, open-air centers which is like, a strip malls and power centers and lifestyle outdoor malls so it's a bunch of real estate people from retail companies and a bunch of. Individual property owners that own these these properties that host them all Z's my senses this category Mall, tends to be less aggregated in the big Regional malls where you name the three big mall operator. Scot: [1:46] Yeah I guess so it's a sold-out show about 500 folks here and fair yeah it's pretty interesting we were here doing a talk I don't want to say too much I think we're going to try to turn it into kind of a visual but video presentation so we're going to try a new form out with that but we were asked to come give kind of a live version of the show and we talked about you were always the folks to get to get in front of a bunch of retailers and Tom they're going out of business if so that was exciting. Jason: [2:14] Yeah I put a bunch of them on a slide that said you don't want to be here. Scot: [2:18] And then I saw some people storm out so I think Mission achieved we think we just killed. Jason: [2:24] One way or another. Scot: [2:26] I wish we have a lot of one and dones here with a Jason and Scott show Roadshow. Jason: [2:35] Exactly we are the ultimate one-hit-wonder but I had fun chatting with you and in a rare occurrence we budgeted an hour for the presentation and took exactly an hour. Scot: [2:45] Yeah yeah if we could just be as good on the podcast that would be amazing but we we nailed it. Jason: [2:51] I like to think when we go long we're just making our audience more. Scot: [2:55] Yeah we're giving them more content for their their dollar. Jason: [2:57] No I mean they have to stay on the exercise bike longer. Scot: [2:59] Truth absolute yes do not get off the the cycle will work time constraint here cuz I've got to hop on a plane next week you or in Las Vegas that shoptalk I'm super envious this is I'm going to miss this year shoptalk unfortunately. Jason: [3:11] It will not be a true shop talk without you to be my my co-pilot but I am looking for to go of course it's been a, Erasure the last couple years it's sold out this year it's at the Venetian I want to say that more than 10,000 people last year so expect it'll be. A big shindig and I'm moderating to panel so I'm doing a panel on Monday in the afternoon at like 2:50 on selling on Marketplace has. Scot: [3:40] What that's my topic. Jason: [3:41] I feel like this would have been your panel has you gone but they're trying to channel, You by inviting me and so I can have the halo effect but we have a couple sellers that are. The telling marketplaces so we have keen is on on the ship which is a great Footwear brand from, from my old Hometown Portland Oregon and then Jordan bass I don't know what this guy did wrong in life but this is will be, the second time he's been on a panel that I moderated and Jordan Reed's e-commerce at the wonderful company so I always like to. Wonderful company owns a Fiji Water so I like to spend. 30 40 minutes talking about the Fiji Water girl with him and then I like to get into the details about how they're able to Shell the pistachios and just sell the the unshelled pistachios are the shelled pistachio. Scot: [4:31] Can you have you been on your panel to. Jason: [4:33] I do incident in addition that you sellers are we have Bridget Davies who is the VP of Revenue and so our growth at eBay so we'll get to hear from from eBay's perspective about how Brands and should be thinking of amusing. Using Marketplace. Scot: [4:48] Cool and then decide for marketplaces what are you talking about. Jason: [4:51] Yep sit in on Tuesday I have a panel called creating a single view of the customer so talking about. Kind of aggravating Gator dated to get that 360 degree view of the customer and how you do personalization and data capture and in all those kinds of things and so we have. Three retailers on on the show we have a. Charlie, who has been on the podcast so I vaguely remember that show because I think we did it in the middle of a party and there may have been some drinking. Scot: [5:22] There was some inviting I remember Charlie is pretty outspoken so I think he'll ask me a fun panel I'm going to call I'm going to call it now. Jason: [5:29] Yeah I think so too and Charlie runs e-commerce at Samsonite which is of course Samsonite but also to me and and i e bags, incident we've got Steve Miller's that's VP of marketing and e-commerce at Jo-Ann stores in so that you know they have an interesting perspective on, on a digital in End customer capture so that that'll be interesting to talk about and then, we have a Greg fanshare who's the the CIO at Express and express as one of the most interesting, long-running customer Affinity programs in the apparel space so he'll be an interesting perspective as well. Scot: [6:07] Free call and then we are back together here in Austin actually April 8th tonight we're going to do another live version of the show for a channel advisor connect so we should start thinking about doing the sides when you get back from Vegas. Jason: [6:19] Do you think I will Channel advisor just pay for us to keep this room at the Fairmont so I can just leave my stuff here. Scot: [6:24] Probably not this is a this is a pretty fancy I don't there is a Residence Inn I'm so maybe maybe they'll store your bags over there. Jason: [6:31] Oscar. Scot: [6:33] Cool well it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without some Amazon news new your margin is there opportunity, quotes of the day Amazon announced a new program for Brands I wanted to kick this one over to you Jason cuz I wanted to get your perspective on it tell us about Amazon Project zero. Jason: [7:03] Finally I get to be the one to do some Amazon news I feel like that's always your thing. Scot: [7:07] Since you're taking my panels I'll give you the whole Amazon news thing too but I'm going to talk about digital fact tags going for it. Jason: [7:17] Project it was kind of interesting so this is a new program that Amazon just announced this week and it's a, program by invite only for select Brands and it apparently gives them these brands of the ability to flag and take down a counterfeit listings. And so. Without any intervention from Amazon or any appeal process a brand that's in the program would have a self-service tool where they could. Identify a counterfeit copy of their product and take it down so for example of Vera Bradley was mentioned as one of the. The pilot customer so they they saw counterfeit handbags on the on the site they could take him down and that's the part. In the short run that I'm most interested in and there's probably the most buzzed-about and there's some pros and cons to this this program, this is part of the bigger counterfeit program anti-counterfeit program they don't actually have a program. [8:22] The weather trying to get Brands to serialize their product and literally like Prince a unique. Serialize barcode on every product and so Amazon's offering that if you, go to this expense when you manufacture your product to put this authentic Asian serial number on each product the Dell validate those serial numbers when they bring them into, the Amazon fulfillment center echo system and so they'll the only allow products with valid serial numbers to come in so this is. Kind of a systemic way the Amazons offering to help Brands keep only authentic products on the site but the reason that's not super interesting in the short run is for a brilliant benefit from that they have to be willing to print this. Spinning a serial number on a package that you need freeze packages. In incremental expense normally they just awesome print the package in huge bulk and then they have to put it on every single package in the channel so it wouldn't be just on the, set of goods they're sending Amazon they have to print it on, everything they sell at Walmart and Kroger and everywhere else and so I have not heard of any adoption for that other than small. Scot: [9:40] So I've been at this for over 20 years now and eBay has gone kind of around the horn on this a couple times where that does program called verified rights owners, the song is a bureau and they they went through a phase where you can kind of like go and solve your room and then the brands way over reach to know they would just kind of go knock out any third-party seller that was selling stuff without any kind of way of validating that it was not even talked to be counterfeit and then they had to kind of like to swing back and I'm in the telecommunication to see if Brands Conover reach on the sand and it just because a third party is selling a Louis Vuitton bag doesn't mean it's kind of it and you know you have to think it's a little kind of murky so it'll be interesting to see I do think, my my easy prediction is going to be a lot of overreaching going on early on with this third-party sellers will go through an outrage phase gmv will go down in these categories in Amazon will then kind of have to swing the pendulum back to some Middle Ground so we'll see how that happens for third-party sellers, I do think I'll be a short-term negative for third-party sellers. Jason: [10:44] Yeah I mean I think there's a couple of ways to look at this somewhat cynical so. Light at the moment most brands would say there's not enough tools to protect the brand on the site right and so there's a. [10:58] A complaint process but it feels very slow and, sort of automated and things take a long time to percolate and you don't necessarily ever see any action in a bit and an even to event Avail yourself of those limited tools you had to have a formal relationship with Amazon which in most cases meant you had to be selling products. [11:16] Through Amazon and so you know some of the brands that most don't like the counterfeit stuff on Amazon have also made the decision not to sell on Amazon themselves and since they have no relationship with Amazon Amazon doesn't make those tools available to them so some some people would say that some of these brand protection tools one of their their secondary purposes is to entice Brands to, to participate on the platform and so I've heard a lot of people speculate that that's one of. The main reasons that Nike for example participates on Amazon is to Avail themselves of the Amazon brand registry so this is more powerful tool presumably as far as we know you have to be in Amazon, brands are selling on Amazon platform to use it so that's another enticement to some of those those holdouts and you know per your point, brands are almost certainly going to over-reach lots of Brands don't like gray Market product even though that's perfectly legal to sell on the, on the side or they don't like product that doesn't comply with Matt, pause price policy even though they don't really have the right to take that down so pretty likely as they invite more people in the program people were over reach you and I were speculating a little bit. Maybe Amazon even already knows that and doesn't care like there's a. [12:34] A hypothesis would be then Amazon wants to improve some machine learning to improve the automated detection of these counterfeit things and said the first thing you need is a big data set, listings that have been identified as counterfeit and so one would thing you do if your Amazon you hire a bunch of people. Look at the listings do the research figure out which were fake and which ones weren't flag all the ones that are fake and then you eat all that data to a machine learning algorithm and eventually you have a really smart system to identify counterfeit and if you were Amazon and didn't want to pay all those, to do that work you could sort of outsourced to the brain by temporarily giving them the tools to Flagstaff themselves, knowing that they would eventually Miss use the tools and you have a great excuse to take the tools away from them but in the interim you have built a good dataset you could use to train a machine Learning System. Scot: [13:24] Another another signal is the product reviews so I've seen many product reviews especially in the health and beauty category it seems to be where I I see it most we're pretty significant number of reviews will say this is not really from, Brand X it's is fake and then so you know that's another interesting signal so maybe if a brand comes in and then does Mark that and they'll get, yep the machine learning could get smarter and no okay up books like these reviewers are right that this is a counterfeit or or if it's not taken down though they'll learn the opposite. Jason: [13:54] Yeah and if you're not a regular selling Amazon like you you'd be shocked how deep are this goes like the the fraudsters are super sophisticated now in the black hat tactics are really evil so for example, they're not likely to write a bunch of negative reviews about your their competitive product they're actually more likely to write. Positive reviews that they know Amazon will flag is fraudulent about their competitors products. And figure takedowns and things that way knowing that Amazon's is very slow and not very good at responding to those complaints about accidental. Scot: [14:29] Cool so also in the news Walmart had some earnings so walk us through the highlights there. Jason: [14:35] Yet so I think it was overall a good quarter for Amazon their same-store sales for Walmart their same-store sales were up 4.2%. Oh that's that's not a huge number but by retail standard that's a very good number again you know there's a lot of retailers the same start negative same-store sales, so 4.2 is reasonably healthy across such a big number that they have and I'm more relevant to our listeners there econ was up 43% for the quarter. [15:06] Cousin hit their 40%. Increase for the year which was their guidance last year so they basically hit it exactly now that issued new guidance for next year and they're, predicting 35% eCommerce growth so still a big number still bigger than Amazon certainly bigger than than that industry overall, but but like many e-commerce sites their rate of growth is is probably decelerating and as we've talked about on the show, a lot of Walmart's e-commerce growth is really tied to this grocery program they have right and so you know unlike traditional general merchandise e-commerce where you know you you put the listing up once available to everyone at Shops at walmart.com, when you put eggs up for sale in a particular store, does eggs are only available to Consumers that our shopping within a close Geographic proximity of that one store then so it's e-commerce sales it's it's it's listed as e-commerce but you almost have to think of it as same-store sales. [16:09] You know that when they they add more stores there their growth seems really high but the reality is is because they went from a store that wasn't selling groceries online to a store that now is and so if you look at it through that lens, Walmart is a little more than halfway through making grocery even available on all their store so they announced that they're at 2,100 stores have online grocery pickup right now, they have 4,000 stores they said by next year. [16:37] 3100 store so that's about the same amount of growth next year they had this year so if you were a investor or Speculator its it seems pretty safe. They added a thousand swords of grocery this year and that drove this is big 40% growth number, they're planning on adding another thousand stores next year that if they hit that stores. Probably going to you know not be that impressive did they cheat 35% growth and they have one more year and them but what you be really worried about is how they calm. Ecommerce sales after that final year when they don't have more more stores to open, and then the other thing is interesting to me is they also announced that only 800 of the stores do they have home delivery and you guys are all heard me talk about I think curbside pickup a bigger deal than home obviously a lot of people do want home, so the only 800 of the 4,000 stores do home and Walmart has used a variety of. Internal and external vendors to do home delivery so they have this thing called spark delivery which is kind of using their own employees to deliver, and they've done some mixed press on that it doesn't seem like it's a huge piece of their delivery Network they partnered with a lot of the third-party delivery firms. [17:51] To do that delivery and that they're only at 800 stores they said they want to double that next year given that they're leveraging Partners you expect that means they're going to lean into their Partners even more. About a week before their earnings deliv announced that they were actually stopping their Walmart partnership. And it first you would assume oh my gosh Walmart my stove fire them for some reason but the the word on the street is that deliver actually turn to Walmart off, because the. Delivers using a gig workers and the workers were so dissatisfied with the deliveries they were getting from Walmart that they started refusing. To get them and that the fundamental complaint is. Hey you're doing worker you take in order to deliver groceries you go to the store the order is not ready you have to wait a long time you have a bunch of downtime. As the deliv driver talk about it. It's a bad experience for the delivery drivers and a lot of inefficiencies on Walmart's part and then on average the customers that are most ordering home delivery are the ones that are farthest away from the Walmart stores which are. [19:01] If you're very far from Walmart store your super roll and it said expensive long delivery thing so it sounds like. There's still some some optimization than improvements. To get home delivery nails at Walmart but it seems like the curbside pickup is going quite smooth and then I guess the last big talking point is, despite the fact that he Converses growing huge it's a significant contributor to that top-line growth it's not a contributor to profitability and in fact Walmart talks about having a loss on their entire e-commerce business and given that there, Thomas make 10 billion dollars in an incremental capex expenditures between now and 2020 they've actually said you can expect. Those losses to increase in potential accelerate in so. They're talk about like a strategically one of the few things Walmart needs to make progress on that they haven't is. Getting profitability on that e-commerce sales. Scot: [19:58] Girl has any Wall Street analyst, picked apart the the growth to see how much is incremental and how much just kind of moving from the offline to the online, part of The Ledger. Jason: [20:09] Not that I have seen and I like to be honest I haven't even seen that you would think at the very least people would start a back into a same-store sales, number and I haven't seen that yet now you you get a lot more of the investor Communications than I do for some reason there's some. People perceive that you're like smarter and more economically successful. Scot: [20:30] We'll get we'll get some of our interns on this for maybe a few drops of also this morning JCPenney announce there are things I thought there's a couple interesting things there that the stock surged and I was like oh they must be out of trouble but really it turns out to be one of these less worse than books. So Revenue was only down 8.4% year-over-year I think there was concern out there as we heard this kind of continuing drumbeat of the back end of Q4 was slow we've had more bankruptcies we got Payless Shoes is kind of have they filed or their tottering on the brink of filing so a lot of people are really concerned about JCPenney so this ended up being kind of a new idea positive in that it wasn't as bad as people that kind of imagined, same-store sales in 219 were only down 4% versus, proceed 4.3 that's like at a point swing compared to Walmart which is pretty interesting Avenue CEO I won't even try to say her last name do you know how to say it Joel Soul Tallahassee while I will try Soul Town and so she made two announcements that were interesting and there's there's this other weird thing that happens in retail now when you announced store closures or stock pops because there was like Yay work closing stores, obviously you can't like enough the endgame there as is. Jason: [21:48] Add trendline doesn't doesn't go forever. Scot: [21:49] Yeah so she knows they're going to close 18 of the main stores and nine of their home and Furniture footprint I and then she declined to give 2019 guidance and then said no pretty much telegraphed expect a lot more store closures so you kind of said something to the effect of we're evaluating all the stores there's no sacred cows all that kind of new CEO stuff, kind of an interesting whipsaw there is so so I see we had Ron Johnson and he left at 13th and there was a guy to co since then so she's like the third since Ron Johnson. Jason: [22:22] Yeah they had the original CEO come back after Ron Johnson and then they had and I'm I'm going to say the name wrong Marvin. Scot: [22:31] Marvin and I he was big on appliances were one of the first things that you'll did was yank all the appliance stuff out so you know it's interesting to watch these gyrations as he's trying to figure out what what they want to be when they grow up. Jason: [22:46] I didn't even know you were allowed to just take a pass on offering a guidance. Scot: [22:51] You can't have soy Amazon only gives 1/4 of guidance they don't give annual guidance and it's more of the trend these days not to offer. Jason: [23:00] Incident in rounding out this foreclosure news L Brands which is the parent company of Victoria's Secret and. A bath one by. Thank you very much I was desperate to say their competitors name. Scot: [23:20] You're the marketplace guy and now I'm the retail. Jason: [23:22] Exactly I love, so they also had a tough quarter or same-store sales in Victoria Secret was down 7% then after closing 53 stores and of course they've been in the news lately for, seemingly not being in touch with the their customers in the marketplace always being accused of that so obviously, they they have a particular image that they try to sell their customers they don't necessarily have super inclusive sizing the a like absolutely do not have super inclusive sizing of models selling their stuff, and as there's been more backlash to that the the management team's response has been pretty like from my perspective. They have a legitimate point for their brand they need to find a much more elegant way to measure message. Scot: [24:16] Yeah at some point you face an existential crisis in you change your mind on those things will be interesting to see if feel feels like they're up against that with 53. Jason: [24:23] Or your successors change change. Scot: [24:27] Absolutely. Some interesting news in the Des kind of delivery category So Yesterday FedEx released a new robot delivery system this one is pretty cool, a little background so Amazon. I think it was three weeks ago they announced that they're also testing a little robot delivery there's looks like a little Moon kind of a Rover because it's got six wheels I don't think that there they can like scissor up or anything like that it just think it is a really good traction on a flat surface. Jason: [24:59] Pick one perfect neighborhood in in like a Seattle suburb that has a perfectly smooth sidewalks that I can go on. Scot: [25:04] Or on Mars so is there does your two options so craters and and a sidewalk in Seattle so out of Memphis FedEx is announced a new robot and its really cool it's called the same day and they partnered with the Segway folks to there's a kind of famous scientist in Cayman and most people know him for Segway but he also before Segway he took the same technology that is in Segway that allows you to use as gyroscopes things to create a balancing system create a wheelchair this is been really huge for four people are disabled this wheelchair can go upstairs so you using the same technology for this robot and in the video you know they show it kind of numb going through some pretty rough terrain and then it can kind of effectively climb up stairs so really cool video there a lot of press for them rarely do you have, delivery on on things like the night shows but one of the one of the Jimmy is the Kimmel or one of the other guys they said they had it on there I'm so really good PR for FedEx they're going to roll it out in Memphis and then quote-unquote other cities so they haven't announced those yet did you have a pretty nice list of brands that are launching it with so Pizza Hut Target Lowe's and AutoZone and if so this is kind of this interesting the last mile delivery problem using robots to do that other interesting thing about the robots that I saw was there using a lot of autonomous vehicle technology so these things are connected they have a little bit of a lidar camera kind of thing on it. [26:31] I'm there. I dug into this pretty good and I couldn't get a lot of details on that so I can be interesting this to learn more about what that looks like cuz I think there's some pretty meeting problems for these things you is there a human just driving this remote from a central location or is it actually autonomous there hasn't been that I saw a lot of detail on that aspect of it. Jason: [26:52] Yeah that'll be interesting when I know we had a lot of attitude yes this year's just even a side effect of a lot of these lidars is they, they're really bad for camera so you can imagine ironically the the FedEx robot taking out all the the ring doorbell. Scot: [27:13] Yeah and another something about lidar as you can shine laser pointers I didn't confuse it. I'm taking meds and someone trying to steal a package by confusing the FedEx robot with a light iron so interesting to see what what happens from these things I bet you know seems infinitely safer than drones in the lot easier to test these out then you haven't had that pee involved in Lacosta, also in Shipping News a couple of quick ones stamps.com is interesting so everyone knows kind of the front end stamps.com but the biggest chunk of stamps.com is they went acquired all the shipping companies that are out there shipstation ship works. Jason: [27:52] And by shipping companies you mean software vendors that help people ship stuff. Scot: [27:56] Yeah for colic smbs and like eBay sellers in Amazon sellers stamps went on this kind of acquisition spree in is accumulated a lot of the large package shippers using the stamps.com software then they have this connection into the USPS just called in Deca they had an exclusive relationship the USPS and they would effectively get sales commissions or I don't know the right terminology there did eventually get a revenue Sheriff's whenever you would buy you $3 for an overnight kind of a delivery from from the USPS if you miss one of the many stamps platforms they would make like a nickel or something like that the shipping so many products that ended up being a really big. [28:39] Part of the revenue will they announce the week ago they were ending this exclusivity Arrangement will USPS and you know the market freaked out but was really interesting is reading the tea leaves on that the CEO of essentially sad you know there's. [28:54] So much going on Amazon and set the bar at 11 so we need to have much higher service levels that we offer and then there's a fair amount of speculation that this is an interesting if you were going to go do a deal with so so a couple of things you have together if Amazon we're going to you know open up their shipping Network for anyone to use it like a FedEx UPS, that's one if in the second half if you wanted to do a deal with them then this is the first step of what you would do if there's a lot of speculation that stamps.com is going to be a front-end into more of a Amazon Logistics kind of solution and you know that that's going to be pretty fascinating. [29:39] Sidebar I've been I'm going to road trip so I don't usually do a lot of road driving I file a lot like you do and I have been blown away by the number of Amazon Prime trucks so I went on a three-hour drive from Raleigh to Washington DC and I literally saw 20 Amazon trucks Emmys on the road it's just like startling how much Amazon Logistics is going on out there then in our area I'm sure in Chicago we see the prime trucks I don't get anything from FedEx or UPS to my house anymore from Amazon that's all direct Amazon so they've definitely kind of started trimming out certain zip codes that must have high Prime density and are doing deliveries through that that smile van program where they have this 1099 networks they built up so big moves happening under the under the surface in the world of of delivery. Jason: [30:25] Yeah I believe so you won't see the bands as much in Chicago because Chicago was an early Market where they build out a. A network of actual Amazon W2 delivery people and so they're there full-time Amazon employees but they don't use the mark Vance so the majority of my packages get delivered by an Amazon employee, one of the easy ways to tell by the way is if you go in till like the mobile app and you look at your orders when Amazon delivers a package they take a photo. That UPS or FedEx won't you if you have a photo as proof of delivery than you know it Amazon for some pride delivered it. The Vans are mostly reserved for those there's third-party companies. That that are franchisees of Amazon Fulfillment of you will end in Chicago we have a blend of flex drivers and. Amazon W-2 employee so we don't have as many of the franchisee. Scot: [31:24] And then the last hit bit and this is back into the world of marketplaces there's a company out of France called Miracle m i r a k l and just want to send them a shout out they just announced 70 million dollar round and what they do is they go primarily to retailers but they also work with some malls in a lot of other other places where you can have a Marketplace so think of it as kind of a Marketplace in a box of so you can kind of say hey let's say I don't know hey JC Penney you want to add a Marketplace here's the software and all the components you need to integrate that in with your existing shopping cart functionality full disclosure their partner of Channel visor so we're already pre-integrated with him so we can go to bring a bunch of celery along with the software and then the last thing I actually forgot to put in the show notes is, Target at least that they have a Marketplace so I saw a thing on cnbc's it looks like targets doing some Marketplace stuff which is interesting so these marketplaces are a kind of I feel gratified talked about him for a very long time and we could only talk about even Amazon but now we have. Copious marketplaces and talk about with obviously Walmart it's a big part of what they're doing and it's interesting to see not only Miracle raise a pretty substantial round of funding to keep spreading the marketplace fire and now we have. Jason: [32:46] So it is interesting to me and almost feels like a a new wave of marketplaces so you obviously you have the businesses that are fundamentally marketplaces I gave an Amazon there their they're. In the past have been some retailers that leaned in the marketplaces so you know Staples talked a lot about it and I still think run one although you don't hear them talk about as much. Scot: [33:09] Actually close to them. Jason: [33:11] And of course the best by briefly ran one and closed it down and so for a while there was a whole Market places are great but not. Every retailer can earn the traffic to make the marketplace work. Now for your point we're seeing I mean Walmart's is leaning heavily in the marketplace is this new Target initiative Albertsons is an interesting, tackling marketplaces from a fresh and frozen perspective which will be unique. Scot: [33:40] Yeah Urban Outfitter has one. Jason: [33:42] And then for your point like Miracle being able to raise money means that there's investors that that think that that's a, a trend that we're going to continue to see as well so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out I almost wish I had founded some company that made money helping people sell on Marketplace. Scot: [34:00] You're a chief strategy retail Commerce digital officer you don't have to worry about mundane things like. Jason: [34:07] No no no but keep doing a good job you may eventually earn another initial in your title of your. Scot: [34:11] I keep working on it sorry. Jason: [34:12] It's important to have goals and that we are going to have to leave it there because, it has happened again we've used up all the allotted time for this a special Scott has to get to the airport short edition of the Jason and Scott show so if you have any questions or comments about the show jump on Facebook and leave them there let us know how much you prefer this much shorter version of the guests, and as always if you enjoyed it would love to get that five star review on iTunes. Scot: [34:43] Thanks for joining us everyone and remember... Jason: [34:46] Until next time happy commercing.

EP159 - 2019 Predictions and 2018 Recap Our annual predictions episode for 2019 and a recap of our 2018 predictions. 2018 Recap - Predictions made on episode 112 Scot Mallageddon 2.0 - We saw 7000 stores close in 2017, I think this accelerates in 2018 as the 30-40% of weak malls fail  closures. YES Amazon will NOT buy another offline retailer, triples down on private label. YES Amazon will squarely get in the last mile business in 2018 and compete with FedEx and UPS. NO Amazon’s ad group will get so large that they have to break out details about it and everyone will be shocked at how large it has gotten so quickly YES Walmart will make a big M+A - top candidates would be Instacart, postmates and eBay. YES Somebody acquires Magento, or they go public. YES 5/6 Bonus - Amazon comes out with Alexa powered wireless earbuds - because I want them. NO Jason Grocery gets disrupted by digital (led by curbside pickup).  Digital grocery doubles in US, at least one delivery firm peters out.YES Drug gets disrupted by digital. NO AI Gap - biggest trend of 2018 NO Voice - Huge but not for commerce. YES Payments - Retail digital wallets die (except Starbucks/Walmart/Amazon).  Bitcoin tanks. YES 3/5 Bonus - Amazon launches a wearable. NO .  Scot crushes Jason! 2019 Predictions Scot At least 5k more store closures in 2019  Amazon - Prof Galloway is big on Amazon having to create a AWS spinoff and has moderated that to tracking stock. I’m going to predict Amazon doesn’t do either of those things. But this WILL be the year they break ads out. eBay/Alibaba - I think this is the year when the both need to do something big and the stars are aligning for a combination there.   Shopify gets acquired by one of the big ad-based companies (facebook/google most likely)  Walmart stumbles in e-commerce Jason Amazon store count exceeds 1000 stores Walmart buys a last mile firm  Another big  bankruptcy (going to be a tougher than expected year, JCP, category killers Office, BBBY, Neiman) Mobile commerce revenue passes Desktop - Aided by PWA’s, and payment API’s we see mobile gap narrow Fads (Voice Commerce, Customer facing AI, SocialCommerce, VR BlockChain) Bonus: Amazon breaks out Prime revenue.   Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 159 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, January 6th, 2019. www.jasonandscot.com Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 159 being recorded on Sunday January 6th 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back and happy New Year Jason Scott show listeners Jason am I mistaken or is that some new music we have there at the beginning. Jason: [0:48] Yeah yeah due to overwhelming listener feedback that I finally updated the the intro to the show it is the same song and the the same announcer but you know you and I both both had some career accomplishments in that in the last year until now there are titles are updated and it's you know just kind of refreshed for the year. Scot: [1:13] Yeah and you how is the new gig going for anyone that missed for smashing on you if you missed any of our last couple episodes but Jason has a new gig will see if I can remember this Chief Grand Superior digital retail Commerce officer is that the right now. Jason: [1:31] The for the second time in a row you nailed it exactly right. Scot: [1:35] Awesome my dad sometimes I drop a word in there but I think I got them all. Jason: [1:38] Yep and impacted cuz you mark that title so much in the last episode I had a ton of a client with legitimately fancy titles all making fun of me for the for the entire break so thanks very much for that Scott. Scot: [1:52] Awesome it's maybe that will be everyone's New Year's resolution is to give Jason a hard time about his awesome new title. Jason: [1:58] For for sure. Scot: [2:00] Coldwell we're post holidays here I think everyone's probably on the edge of their seat did you get any cool new gadgets. Jason: [2:12] Ya always tough. Like in general there's an extremely narrow gap between my desires and fulfillment in so. Like if I got some new gadgets for Christmas it's most likely because a new Gadget came out right before Christmas so I will say I did some refresh is I finally got the. The iPad Pro the 10.5% sync you also have I haven't unbent version I've been pretty. Pretty happy with that and because because of the new job I had to trade out laptops and so now I have finally have a in all USB C. Ecosystem with the iPad and the the the laptop so I've getting those new gadgets of course cost me thousands of dollars in new adapters and cables in. And all angles but I guess the one minor little toy I got is a new. A video camera well I got a couple new vision cameras so I got the DJI osmo pocket. Scot: [3:24] Nice. Jason: [3:25] This is a tiny as in fits like in the palm of your hand you could you could hide it in your hand video camera with a a fully-functioning gimbal so it's, pretty cool to have some some. Funny pictures I'm looking forward to taking nap to the several upcoming trade shows that will probably talk about in a minute so that has been cool and I did a little earlier than Christmas get the new Nikon. Mirrorless camera system so a Nikon Zed 6 if you're from your upper or a Z6 if you're in the US. Scot: [4:01] Cool house that is the mirror listen can you tell the difference. Jason: [4:05] Yet yet so Nikon has always had a great reputation for digital still cameras and great image quality in low-light capability in the color rendering they've been extraordinary really horrible at video. And I'm assuming I actually need a camera that's. Okay it Stills and also very good at video so the fact that I've always own Nikon cameras and have Nikon lenses have been. A constant pain point for me because my car's been so far behind on video and so there's some the mirrorless cameras in general are much better at video and this this. Nikon's first mirrorless full-frame camera. Really does a pretty good weed frog for video capabilities in a lot of ways so it's it's definitely the best. Video stills camera I've ever owned. Scot: [5:01] Koba I know you're off to CES next week and we will have a lot more gadget news for us then you and I are both at the NRF Big Show so maybe we'll shoot some video do a live streaming or something fun like that. Jason: [5:12] I will bring all those gadgets why be using them to photograph any cool new gadgets that you got for the holiday stuff. Scot: [5:19] I I said William like you where I think I probably had caught up on my gadgets before the holiday suit so nothing new for me. Oh yeah yeah I do think did you get the keyboard case on your iPad I really enjoyed that. Jason: [5:35] Yeah I did I've enjoyed that it's been it's my first iPad with a pencil so that has been it's been cool yeah. Not permanently I I will concede to have misplaced it but it it does reemerged. Scot: [5:51] That an airpods have this weird like they want to get lots of gaple somehow his program them to is a margin enhancer to get lost as quickly as they possibly can. Jason: [6:02] I'm afraid to even talk about that because my my wife is so much more responsible than me and she's on like her her like 4th or 5th pair and I am still in my originals through some some like and Candy miracle. Scot: [6:15] Goodwill as is our tradition here on the Jason Scott show every year we kick off the new year with a recap of what happened in the last year and then we have our predictions so the predictions are twofold last year about 365 days ago we made a bunch of predictions couldn't remember so it's kind of fun to go back and look at those are super geeky and want to go back that was episode 112. It's a method that means we did 47 shows last year so that's 47 hours roughly of Jason Scott if you if you have a week to burn if you have mono or something like that that you want to recover from and you need something to put you to sleep for 47 hours a week we have your cure so we will be breaking the show into three pieces for going to do kind of a good bad ugly of 2018 and then we can go into recapping our predictions and squirm and then from 2018 and then we're going to put out some 2019 predictions so I think what you'll see from the 28th predictions is we're actually pretty good pretty good at this thing after how long you been at this 3 for years now I think we're getting pretty good on the prediction game. Jason: [7:34] That's easier for you to say than it is for me to say this year but sure. Scot: [7:39] Without further delay let's jump into The Good the Bad and the Ugly Jason what order a couple of your goods from 2018. Jason: [7:46] Yep so I was really excited to see some of the new physical store Concepts and the very end of the year you know Nike open at House of innovation we talked about that in the last show that's super exciting to me I think some of the Amazon Concepts like go and 4-star are are super interesting there's a lot of new physical Marketplace Concepts like we've had beta on the show I've mentioned show failed before and then a lot of these mobile-first stores like the Sam's Club now so I think, the you know we're really starting to see digital Impact Physical stores and drive new store Concepts which is awesome. [8:24] On the platform front I was excited to see Adobe make the big investment in Magento in an e-commerce platform. In many ways I feel like the the commercial platform space in the Enterprise platform space in particular that I play in is kind of. In the worst spot it's been in in 10 years in terms of. You don't really meeting the needs of retailers and clients and there's always been this this conflict between CMS systems that people like Adobe make and commerce platforms that people like. IBM sap in Oracle make in so I'm very optimistic that adobe who who is dominating the CMAs. Essbase then making a significant investment investment in e-commerce you know really could be the way forward for 4. A lot of new new retailers in in Commerce entities that need an enterprise-class system. And I say this with the one caveat Magento as it is is not the solution. [9:33] Adobe's willingness to invest in Magento 2 me is historically a Dobby is always been a. And aggressive acquire that acquired a bunch of stuff and you know it often takes them several years to really integrate the stuff so I'm not expecting Miracles this year per se but in the long run feels like. Adobe deciding that Commerce is an important part of the stack is super exciting and then my my last good for the year. Is kind of specific it was Walmart's investment in Flipkart in the reason I think that is good I think it is super smart for. From Walmart to be aggressively fighting for digital in in the super important Emerging Market in India. Some things happened late last year that make those Investments actually look a little softer is as a Indian regulation on foreign Commerce is has gotten more challenging but the reason I just think it's good overall is. I feel like that investment that huge investment in digital for Walmart you know his is the most. [10:38] Tangible physical manifestation of Walmart's absolute recognition that. Digital is the way forward in the day you know that they have to compete with the Amazon than alibaba's of the world and can't can't abdicate any of that Digital Ground And so seeing them them fight for for that that intellectual property you know I think is a encouraging sign for all of us in the future what about you what would it were you excited about last year Scott. Scot: [11:07] Well I'm always the guy that gets to say it wouldn't be the Jason Scott show without Amazon and Sonos surprised they're my good is crying it out with Amazon so I thought was really interesting than Amazon you mentioned a little bit but they really expanded their store footprint so they had acquired Whole Foods back and 17 which obviously is a big splash into offline and they never really expanded Whole Food stores I mean 2018 was a year of kind of adjusting that that acquisition they announce now they're going to start opening more here in 2019 so that's going to be interesting to see I think the surprise for me in an impossible one was done to go experiments and then just kind of really ramping that up pretty quickly you know I think they built another for 5 is that many more on the way there's rumors of wars and then you're the one thing as I travel around not nearly as much as you but going to various malls and things I would say pretty much every a mall in the US seems to have an Amazon pop-up store and I think about all those people I don't know how many that is it's how many of these are out there but I think if we looked at. [12:23] Your class A malls I think there be three or four hundred of them so I wouldn't be surprised if there was three or four hundred pretty substantial Amazon pop-ups out there so it's I think that's pretty interesting and really is a testament to the Amazon. [12:38] You're expanding into kind of omni-channel world and get their products in front of more people. [12:43] I'm done once asked on the front end of Amazon the back end of Amazon that was really interesting this year was what I would call it start a frenetic expansion of. Delivery capabilities some of this is last mile so they acquire twenty thousand of these Mercedes Sprinter vans I'd be surprised if any listener at least the United States hasn't seen one of these I see you to a date at this point in my area. [13:09] And they built a 1099 Network a very clever way kind of taking a page out of FedEx Grounds Playbook where they were actually kind of put you in the business guarantee you rub you and routes and then boom you're off and running so I think they got those 20,000 sprinters out there delivering packages and something like six months which is just pretty crazy about a lot of soccer capabilities so if you're a third-party now you can use Amazon soccer in your phone at Center and almost be like little extension of FBA Whole Foods we saw them can I ditch instacart and then layer and their their 1099 other 1099 network of Flex for that they've added a ton more jets that got to where are hubs coming and I attractive distribution centers pretty closely so in the USA in 2018 they added 46 more performance center assets and then another 23 in the rest of the world for a total of about 70 I am all in that's an additional 11 million square feet of space that came on line in 2018 and then that adds to the existing 850 or so globally and 250 million square feet so, so it's a lot of people that I always talk to you that the baby not in the industry but on the cusp there always surprise I'll say what how many how many from home as soon as you think Amazon has versus Walmart but they both have 10 and the number I think that's about right with Walmart but Amazon has. [14:34] Tremendous amount of assets they built so it matters it's Amazon a so far ahead of anyone it is going to be interesting to see there. My last surprise was becoming I think the economy did really well last year even the last reported as of December on the job side was really really strong so that we're seeing a strong economy you know as the Fed kind of Titans interest rates in the stock market with a lot of shakiness there but underlying economy. [15:09] Then let's put it in the battle I'll start those so I think the bad was I was so surprised about how kind of negative to Amazon hq2 process turned out, kind of ended in a in a thud you know it wasn't like this kind of I guess unless you're one of the two cities I think they're. Pretty excited but even then there's a lot of protesting going on in the DC New York area that Amazon's coming and then it got these really big incentives so yeah I think that's going to be interesting to watch and see what happens as Amazon is so large now that they can't just fly under the radar and I think they managed the back of that process kind of weirdly not where it seems like everyone that are decided and then and then it's kind of pain a conspiracy theory if you believe that they were just Gathering data from people what I'm concerned about a little bit you and I emailed about this just recently I kind of put it in the bad category in this is holiday 2018. I'm so Adobe came out a couple days ago what their final report they said the holiday came in at 14%. That's e-commerce so Little Debbie disappointing if that's true then you send me some data that showed MasterCard said all in 5.1 I guess you know this better than I do dinner or else was right around there and set right would that be kind of a win or a loss of your. Jason: [16:30] Yet so for all of retail that's that that's probably a win it's a little better than the recent historical averages but I think the. That does averages hide the fact that you know it just was not equal 4 for all retailers and inside I definitely think there are winners and losers. Scot: [16:54] Yeah unfortunately don't think we'll know until Amazon reports there they're kind of the Bellwether I look at and you know, Indus. Where they would have pre-announced if they had missed so they haven't said anything unfortunately Apple did pronounce look like they had a really rough calendar Q4 I believe it's there there theraphysical q1i which is always confusing what companies do it that way but that seems to be isolated to China with some of the tariffs and things in the Chinese economy that that I don't think we'll Amazon has as much exposure to just really interesting to see where holiday 18 and zup and I think we'll know what covered on the show as we always do I think we'll know by that first week in February however all the all the leaves fell and and what happened. Jason: [17:41] Yeah I'm looking forward to seeing how that all plays out so some of my bads. Didn't get a ton of Buzz last year but I've been pretty disappointed in the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling regarding a internet sales tax and so you know, basically the Supreme Court rule made a ruling in favor of a state that was suing to collect sales tax on. An internet sales in Oxy like I'm okay with. People having to pay sales tax for other online purchases I'm I actually think in general rather be Universal pricing and in. You know you buy from the same retail online or in the store you want to see the same price and and that's a lot to be taxed in a similar way the reason I say that the ruling was bad is. Because a bunch of the ramifications of the way this particular ruling plays out it just creates a lot of uncertainty in friction in the e-commerce space and so. Which states you actually need to collect sales tax in which they tax you definitely don't need to collect sales tax in and which states. You may or may not get sued by a state if you don't collect sales tax in right now is kind of. [19:02] Thrown up in the air and it creates a lot of inconsistency and just a lot of. A sort of effort and friction that isn't helping anyone and so I feel like there was opportunity for for Congress to solve this problem before dumping in the lap of the Supreme Court's and. You know maybe that was overly optimistic so didn't happen until we're going to have to let this play out for now a number of years and. Just like the unfortunate the other sort of bad one to me this year is we had some kind of ugly CEO exit so you know what we forgot about that this far end up but we had. You know the very ugly exit at Lululemon. [19:44] Early in the year I want to see February he was he was the CEO and chairman and got kind of forced out and he's now been. In an irritant for them on an ongoing basis you know Mickey Drexler was. Lasted less than a year of J.Crew and you know maybe not CEO of all but you know I see you judge executive term for some bad reasons it Nike. And so you know that certainly to me as one of the the the bad blemishes on on 2018 from a Commerce perspective. [20:19] And then my my ugly if we give it to the the really bad stuff for 2018 I just think it what I mean you're always going to have churning in retail stores are always going to have, bankruptcies Doug mcmillon famous what he carries around this west of the top 10. [20:36] Can retailers from my 1980 and there aren't a lot of those names that are that are still in business today so bankruptcies are in a shock but I feel like. 2018 hits is particularly hard with Toys R Us and Sears and then you know below them you had all these other guys David's Bridal Mattress Firm Brookstone Nine West Claire's Gymboree bonds. Etc and so you know as a lover of Commerce and Retail and sorry to see some of those stories brands. [21:07] You don't go away or get greatly diminished so that's only felt ugly and then right towards the end of the year, we had a IBM sell their big Enterprise e-commerce platform Webster Commerce to US service provider HCL, that to me is a probably super ugly for IBM clients that are relying on that platform and. You know now it's fragmented from the rest of the IBM stacked and there's going to be a bunch of challenges there there's a bunch of clients that own the or just moving to the. The cloud version of Webster Commerce which they didn't sell so that seems ugly I just feel like the the Enterprise Commerce platform space. In general is in a bad space and it's most manifested by by IBM which was you know one of the top three platforms are arguably the top platform getting kind of dumped by IBM this year. Scot: [22:08] Call yeah I'm going to plus one or as my kids would say retweet on the bankruptcies that tear you when was painfully know is that it is a kid that grew up Star Wars fan I spent many a midnight madness so you know. Jedi Friday or whatever the column hanging out in t r u so that was disappointing then you. Add insult to injury one of the shopping center if we go to a lot had a combined Tru Babies R Us like a huge one it just sitting there empty for the last last three or four months is kind of sad. Yeah I kind of say you know in this top of the mall Denton, so interesting stat here that came out towards the end of the year. I mentioned it, he did pretty well but malls were there emptiest in six years from a tenancy standpoint no foot traffic is also down at malls this company RI sorry is I had a report that said that they're at an 8.6% vacancy. [23:05] Again that's the highest it's been in 6 years and that represents 4 million square foot is the most available square footage in malls and then strip malls have been hit chick really bad because you know I think Toys R Us is really kind of one of those strip-mall type stores that it was an anchor for a lot of strip malls and and as we see in the enclosed malls when she loosened his anchors you get up into this death spiral kind of situation so I would also Echo that on the ugly side cool so so that was kind of the what was sawed in 2018 let's put it to our predictions in and see if how Clairvoyant we were on condos so I went back to Good Ol episode 112 and service predictions I'll go to mine and then you go to yours and then what kind of see how he did sue her quickly I had five predictions and a bonus so number one Mulligan 2.0 in 2017 we saw 7,000 stores closed and I said it's going to accelerate into 2018. [24:05] I ended up with 9,000 closures then my second prediction was that Amazon will not buy another retailer this doesn't seem like people may think well why would you say that it's kind of obvious but back then we were on the heels of the Whole Foods acquisition in a lot of Wall Street analyst for like issuing those reports you know Costco's Definitely Maybe the next company know it's Nordstrom's know its Target so that's that was kind of the backdrop. Predictions is really say these guys are off base I just don't think Amazon's could do anything big again in 2018, in the corollary to that was that they would instead of doing that they would triple down on private label. [24:44] Third prediction I ripped my prediction on Amazon Logistics they would be competing more squarely with FedEx ups and then number for this one turned out, pretty good I said Walmart will make big m&a instacart Postmates and eBay so, playing on Marketplace and last-mile their number 5 and said somebody would acquire magenta or they would go. And then my bonus was the Amazon would come out with Alexa powered, your butt's so I mentioned airpods the topless show I love my airpods but I am not a huge Siri fan and I everyday I wish Alexa what would hang out on my airpods instead of Siri so that was the Genesis of that production Warrior 2018 predictions. Jason: [25:30] Yep so I also had five in the bonus the first one was the grocery would get heavily disrupted by digital I think I called out specifically that would be wed by curbside pickup. Number two was the drug would get the heavily disrupted by digital, number three I said the biggest train would be talking about in 2018 was what I called that AI gap which was kind of, the difference between the big players that could take full advantage of AI in the smaller players that couldn't necessarily afford to do it as quickly, predictions for was voice I said it's going to continue to be huge and grow quickly but not for Commerce. And then my V prediction was mobile payments was digital wallets I said a bunch of them with. I said Starbucks Walmart and Amazon when continue to thrive but a bunch of the other ones women's and, snarky side note I mentioned that I expected Bitcoin to tank and then my bonus was. Close to the same as yours I I said that I thought the Amazon would come out with a wearable in 28. Scot: [26:42] What did you what you mean by Rebel. Jason: [26:45] Army night. Your paws were the most likely scenario but I just felt like they would find some way to get Alexa on on your body and especially because they lack the phone that seems like. You don't like it could be some kind of widget that you you clip to your clothing or or carry with you but but or I wear something like that but I guess my biggest expectation was that it would be your pot. And we will talk about the results of that moment early but I want to start off by breaking down how well you did so now that we reminded everyone what we thought 2018 would look like in the beginning of 2018 let's see how we actually did so your first prediction was the store Mulligan what do you think. Scot: [27:38] Yeah I'm going to because I put a specific number in there of 9,000 I I I missed that one turns out it took me a while to find the state looks like there was 6235 closures in hindsight what I should have done and there's no good data set for this is looked at the square footage of so you know when I don't know when a mattress firm closes that's different than a Sears or JCPenney are Toys R Us closing right is this really the square footage we care about so I would argue I would throw myself at the feet of the judges and say look at miss the number of stores but I think if you look at kind of what did clothes and yours juices rundown of store closures in 2018 Toys R Us 735, Walgreens 600 n Taylor Loft Dress Barn 500 Teavana 379 Best Buy 250 Mattress Firm 200 Gap 200 Children's Place 144 Footlocker 110 Kmart 109 Gymboree 102 and then let's goes It goes from there another kind of big square footage when Sam's Club 63 how big is a Sam's Club like two hundred thousand. Jason: [28:49] 100 weeks but yeah. Scot: [28:50] Honored yet so there's enough so it's all right I think if we looked as square footage I bet and I don't have a source for this unfortunately I have heard that the there was way more square footage in 2018 so. Who does if you want to hold it till I rely on the stop. Jason: [29:08] Yeah I'm actually giving you that one because I would, went out do I call the sources we do have the track store closures none of them claim or try to be comprehensive so they're they're tracking stores in a particular category or that made a particular criteria and saying they close that many but none of them for example are trying to keep track of. Potentially how many mom-and-pop closed or those sorts of things and even there are a couple of sources of square footage in your right the square footage is more dramatic because we had closure is it a lot of big stores but even the square footage tend to be like. People that are attacking mob a square footage in what the closures are so I just I don't think there is a definitive number but I think the spirit of your prediction came to pass and I think was the. The biggest shrinkage of a store for stores in in recent memory. Scot: [29:59] Colton so we'll call that one in the sky cam. Jason: [30:05] For sure so your second prediction Amazon will not buy another offline retailer and you said they'd triple down on private label so pretty with B, and I prediction but but I actually. I liked it so how do you think you did. Scot: [30:24] Predictions so obviously I didn't make another big acquisition of an offline retailer in it you know the trouble down on private label I think maybe they even quadruple down that it's hard to get data on the cell to does a good job and then we had some other data folks 10:10 to concentrate on the show and you know I think if you could attract our conversations on the show or the squeeze 7 episodes the second half of 18 we were spending a lot of time talking about Amazon 3rd party because it's probably the number one thing on retailers and Brands mines you know so so so I would call this definitely something that happened there. Jason: [31:12] That for sure, annoyingly totally giving it to you so 242 so far your third prediction which I touch you like is your annual protection, is the Amazon Logistics. Scot: [31:30] Yeah and this one's kind of squishy so I'm going to kind of say this was a zero so my mind we won't cross this one until I can ship a product on Amazon like I would FedEx from point A to point B. So I think it's become insanely cleared everyone that this is what they're building now so I think everyone is kind of, in fact if you if you go look at a FedEx stock chart and you'll see they had a number of issues with the terrorist it help them it would not, listen to their conference call their CEO and founder Fred Smith, you got a little agitated by a kind of the fifth or sixth Amazon question that he got so I think it's become pretty apparent everyone would Amazon's doing here and the the ball is no longer hidden the cards are on the table and who knows maybe 2019 will be that year when we can ship a product Coast to Coast for $3 on Amazon. Jason: [32:31] Yeah for sure so I'm sort of with you I feel like they made a lot of progress in that direction seems like you need to be something that will happen but but you don't get full credit for this year so if only because I need to keep the predictions competitive, so your fourth prediction was the Amazon the ad group we get so large that they would have to break out there the revenue separately and that people would be totally shocked how how big they got so quickly. Scot: [33:04] Yeah and so did this is a win they didn't have to break it out like they do AWS work so I could separate kind of reporting piano but they have had to break it out because it has been so large they created this they when they announced the quarter last year they said going forward they would change the way they recorded stuff. Unfortunately they stopped recording a lot of my favorite stuff which was kind of sad so they used to have this interesting breakdown between him and some things that have gone away now but when they did that they did start to break out category called other and everyone knows that that's like 99% and so and it has gotten quite large so you'll hear me talk a little bit more about that in 2019 president. Jason: [33:50] Yeah and you don't even though you're bad at reading predictions and you put that highly specific thing in there that didn't happen I'm totally giving this one to you like for people that haven't lived through the industry in last year people are not talking about Amazon's ad Revenue in January of last year in you don't even like the Scott Galloway's of the world that like make a living. Making predictions and then you know reminding everyone when they're right he wrote a book that you don't Amazon with 1/4 of the book and he barely mentioned advertising in that book in like, July and so for you back in January to have said hey there ads is going to be this big thing and it was going to be shocked when they find out how big it was and then you know last June and then again in October when they you know, showed how fast that was growing and everyone's exactly talking about that I feel like you you basically put the words right in there was a mouth so I'm totally giving you credit for that but you still ain't get one point for it so so you're three or four running into to your V prediction which was that. Annoying Walmart will make a big MMA and you mentioned some some last-mile candidates. Scot: [35:08] Yeah. Jason: [35:09] How you did Scott. Scot: [35:10] I'll give you sixteen Billy syneresis flag, Walmart acquired what card it was not one of the ones that predicted but. You know I probably should have so it was my my set up on this one going back then was, it's not like Walmart had all this pressure you know that they had to get in the game with with Amazon more and I was thinking Last Mile but it totally makes sense on their National side as well so that was, clearly a good call to kind of read the tea leaves on that one. Jason: [35:48] Yeah that was totally good and then annoyingly even though they were only supposed to be 5 predictions you did 1/6 prediction and you know to be annoyingly for me cuz I I'm I have this one-sided rivalry when I'm trying to compete with you I believe your 6 prediction was that a Dobby would acquire Magento for 1.6 billion dollars. Scot: [36:07] It wasn't that accept fake but it was that someone would acquire Majin to or they would go public so so there you know so having been on the other side of this when when you get to a certain scale as a startup in the magenta got through some complicated things but they're effectively a start up again right there an independent entity they had a private equity the clock starts ticking was what I was thinking and what that clock means is that investor wants their money back and he's private Equity guys BC's want a 10-year Horizon private equities like two or three that was kind of feeding into that prediction and then you know it's also on the other side it's. Musical chairs you know so so everyone every big cloud he's going to want to have a great platform and it just felt like there was. One chair left in and kind of two Cloud companies that wanted to sit in that chair so so that's what it said in the so happy that I read those tea leaves right as well. Jason: [37:07] What congratulations so recap five out of six right and then you did do the bonus one and that was the Amazon would have an airpod like headphones they and what it what do you want to say about that stuff. Scot: [37:23] So my strategy here is it's easy to call this when the wind because you had the same one so your Prime. So Amazon specifically didn't get released this but this is actually my son was looking for some new headphones so we went to, I would assume next to the derelict Toys'R'Us I mentioned earlier and I was surprised I'm a big I'm listening I'm on the show right now with some qc35 from Bose and I looked and it said now featuring Alexa and I was like what the heck, this is awesome now Alexa is in the Bose headphones then I went over to the job or display and it said now featuring Alexa then I went over to like two other kind of you know generic style things and literally as I backed up and looked at the row of headphones every single pair suddenly I had Alexa so what's happened is Amazon has issued an API or some kind of capability in a very strategically work with a lot of these manufacturers and unbeknownst to me until now literally like January 2nd when we were born in some. [38:29] Best Buy gift cards they are there are a lot of airpod like Technologies and and you have every configuration headphone you can imagine with Alexa now and I play with it it's actually exactly how I want it to be so on my Gadget which list is I am hoping that somehow these Bose headphones I have break and that I can. Get a new pair with Alexa or maybe I need to go check and see if I can retro them to have Alexa probably not try some kind of I'm sure there's some. Gizmo this to make me buy a new car. Jason: [39:02] Yea though I can certainly help you with the accidental breakage problem when I see you in in New York in a couple weeks but yeah yeah same boat I I'm not giving it either this credit for this cuz the Amazon didn't didn't actually, come out with an Amazon branded product but what did happen I can't remember the exact date like August or September they did finally release exactly as you suggested an API that made it totally possible for OEM to build Alexa into the headphones and you can imagine folks are doing it right then but then even a bigger deal one of the big chip manufacturers in November started shipping a new Bluetooth chipset the included that capability and access to that API in the chips at so you're already seeing a bunch of announcements that's before. Brands had the opportunity to build new products with this new Bluetooth chipset my expectation is I'm going to show up in Las Vegas tomorrow and there are going to be Bluetooth products with an Alexa embedded in them coming out of my ears with early. So I think we yeah we may have missed The Branding on that one but the floodgates are about to open up and not one of my predictions but sidenote like I think everyone's noticed that. [40:24] Airpods have been Apple's most successful product in The Last 5 Years and you know the. The Amazon Alexa family's been the most successful Consumer Electronic it in The Last 5 Years, I'll be shocked if we don't see apple Google and Amazon directly battling it out with smart smart earbuds this year. Scot: [40:44] Cool one of the one of the many Jason Scott show interns just handed me a note it looks like I can upgrade my headphones with firmware so we're going to stop a show right now. Jason: [40:58] We're not going to stop at but you may not hear Scott anymore cuz he's going to like drop by the audio. Scot: [41:03] I'm going to be upgrading my firmware while Jason finishes the wrestler show speaking of Jason let's go through your predictions so what was my score so was it 5 out of 7. Jason: [41:13] I forgot I forgot what it was I'm giving you five out of six we're not counting the bone. Scot: [41:18] Okay but I think that helps you but I'm okay with. Jason: [41:21] Well but we're also the setting it was the same bonus oh. Scot: [41:24] Okay so your first one was grocery gets disrupted by digital led by curbside pickup listeners will longtime listeners will know that is your favorite. Grocery solution digital grocery doubles in the US at least one delivery firm Peters out. Jason: [41:41] Yep so, I'm calling out a window side note I have come to realize that I hate my predictions from last year and because I just, put them badly like they're too subjective and in many cases like hard to measure so at one of my New Year's resolution is to write better predictions and we'll find out how very shortly. Scot: [42:05] It's easy to say you hate them in January of 2019. Jason: [42:08] Yeah for sure for sure but but I do think the sentiment of this when like was wildly true Walmart ruled after I pick up to 2,000 stores that over 40% e-commerce growth every quarter this year which is wildly faster than last year is faster than Amazon Kroger get a bunch of their own curbside pickup called quick list but a bigger deal they did an exclusive partnership with Arcado the biggest digital Grocer in UK Albertsons made a bunch of big Investments they both announced that they were going to watch the first digital grocery Marketplace and they also announced that they were going to build dedicated micro fulfillment centers out of the backs of a bunch of the Albertsons stores our friends at shoptalk launched a dedicated digital grocery show called grocery talk and it's sold out with 3,000 attendees in the first year you know you go internationally and the the Ali Baba concept hammer and the JD concept 7 fresh are going nuts I think it's it's a safe and fair to say digital grocery blew up even even though. You know I mean I have perfectly nailed the specifics and again there's no perfect metric but it does appear that digital grocery more than doubled in the US. Scot: [43:28] Wood shed delivery from Peter. Jason: [43:30] Yeah that's the part where I sort of depends on how you count right like you could argue that like one that got acquired like shipped for example. Scot: [43:42] Oh that's like tripled. Jason: [43:44] Not with any retailer besides Target. And I think I mean you know there's there's something there on the ropes a little bit but yeah that was a dumb part of the prediction so you can you're going to trust me anyway so don't you don't need a whole night. Scot: [44:00] Oh when writing predictions don't don't like a daisy chain hands together because. Jason: [44:06] When specifics yeah yeah. 2 + 1 is that is that I'm one-for-one right now feel free to stop listening to schoenauer. Scot: [44:17] Okay the judges give you that one okay because we're going to flip your aunt's to Anor and give you one there alright your second prediction was drugs get disrupted by digital. Jason: [44:30] Yeah and I mean a few things did happen that are interesting Amazon invested a billion dollars in pillpack they wash their first over-the-counter brand basic care they partnered to do that like at home medical devices under the choice brand of course there's this big joint health care venture between Amazon Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan but to me none of that adds up to a true disruption yet and I I mean I think there's some is there a lot of interesting tea leaves to read this year but I'm I'm not going to argue that I should get a point there. Scot: [45:12] All right and then your third prediction was the biggest trend of 2018 will be the AI Gap. Jason: [45:21] So once again a stupid prediction how do you argue something is or isn't the biggest Trend but I think it's safe to say this wasn't so I kind of miss this one like you know I do think. Aai was one of the hype things that got a lot of chatter in 2018 and there was one IPO that you could argue with sort of AI Commerce which is Stitch fix realistically like I didn't I don't think we saw a i dramatically transformed any retailers and so my my way more specific prediction that. Did the it would open a gap between the big retailers in the little retailers why I just don't think it's fair to say that happened so that was a dumb prediction and I'm I'm not one for 3. Scot: [46:06] Okay I'll see how you did a number for you said his voice is going to be huge but not for Commerce. Jason: [46:14] Yeah so again based on my fragile ego I feel like this one is climbing out of the hole a little bit I do think of voice was huge I think Amazon alone has said they sold over a hundred million devices now it's their best-selling device on all their big days that there's some by some metrics Google is actually. Selling more devices in the last couple quarters than Amazon I'm not sure I totally believe that but but I do believe they're selling a bunch of devices as well until for sure, voice over all was huge and I think even more clearly voice commerce was not there was some some data that came out in the third quarter that said that less than 2% of people that own smart speakers that ever tried to do Commerce with it feel like the only only even moderate volume, Commerce type applications were things like a Starbucks in the Uber for sure people are not ordering things with. Complicated attributes and in promo codes via there their voice devices self. Again I'm going to take the win there and which would put me at 2 for 4. Scot: [47:32] Does that hundred million devices suppression. Jason: [47:36] No because I mean some very low-cost devices we haven't talked that an issue I don't think that they now even have like and you can frequently get devices free and as part of bundles but they never liked him $19 device that you can plug into any speaker. And so they they just have all the price points in there you know there, is you highlighted there a huge advertising platform than one of that biggest biggest media platforms on the on the planet and they generally dedicate about half of all their pixels to selling this stuff so I mean. Today I am not shocked they sold that many devices if you if you ask me in a 3 years ago when they started this stuff if they would get there this past I probably would have said that shot. Scot: [48:21] So just like one way I think about this is probably 80% domestic 20% International I don't think they push the Alexa stuff is hard International so then to the pilot 89 us net, that article is totally undermined right is global High thing. Jason: [48:40] Yeah I think that was a global number. Scot: [48:42] There's three hundred and fifty people are in the US 250 households 200 million households. Jason: [48:51] Little north of 200. Scot: [48:52] Yes it was just going to round numbers 200 million households 80 million devices there's going to be some like your house that has 30 devices but that's like we on this Edge Neo so you know call it's approaching half us households have an Alexa device that's pretty amazing. Jason: [49:13] Yeah for sure but it is I feel like it is pres been on them like they're lots of devices that get to that. That 50% market share eventually and it depends on the technology took a long time but I do think one of the ramifications of the like modern digital era is. That all of this happens much faster so you know it. Adoption of new things just happens much more quickly than it did in the ear of radio or TV and so you know smart speakers, you know followed a similar trajectory to a lot of those other media technologies that they just did it in a way I can press time. Scot: [49:47] God I wish I could give you two on this one but it's been our custom to just give one point prediction so sorry. Jason: [49:53] Yeah totally totally fair. Scot: [49:56] Then your payments so you said retail die. And Bitcoin tanks so you didn't and in there. Jason: [50:11] So like you got him like me for my poor Boolean logic and again stupidly written like I call that some specific digital wallets that were the exceptions and those exceptions large we did really well Starbucks did very well on there some evidence that Walmart did well Amazon you know his continuing to thrive is a digital wallet I didn't spell out the digital wallets that wouldn't do well but in my mind there were two families of those there's Apple and Google which, like all indications are are pretty flat so there are people using them in liking them but it but it does not appear that they're growing particularly fast and it doesn't appear that they're getting as much reuse as, I'm sure they would hope so so our friends over it payments that that track this like it kind of found ample in Google to be flat and then there was this whole genre of digital wallets from financial institutions so specific Banks like Chase and Citibank and the card issuers like MasterCard and visa and. [51:13] Yeah none of those digital wallets are used by anyone that's not a family member of the company so I do feel like that that is fair and then stupidly put a hand in there 4 Bitcoin that had nothing to do with digital wallet so I have no idea why I did that but that is arguably, my best prediction of the entire thing because I think Bitcoin was at $16,000 a coin and in that is the beginning of January that you wanted me to prediction and today it's at about 3:36 hundred bucks so it's basically a quarter of its its former value so if you if you wanted to invest in any prediction in this entire, in N last year's entire show the most money you could have made was to take my advice and short bed. Scot: [51:59] Unless you were a Magento investor. Are Flipkart okay and then finally you said Amazon will come out in the wearable and I think you have already dismissed. Jason: [52:14] Yeah yeah thank you you are to cover that one so so I think you add all that up I'm I'm three out of five you're for it at 5 but with a like a much richer more impressive for. Scot: [52:26] Cool thank you I appreciate the kikuta sir I think you did a good job but hopefully you learned some some important lessons about writing your predictions and let's let's jump into that you want to go first you want me to go first. Jason: [52:39] I want to go first, before you jump in and in case we have any that overlap. Scot: [52:45] Are you good for. Jason: [52:46] So my first prediction is that Eddie Lampert is not going to launch a space exploration company. Wait wait that's all right so cheating just making fun of your negative predictions but I do like that one if anyone wants to keep it as my bonus my first one I guess I'm trying to have more measurable objective things I think continuing the the evolution of Amazon's brick-and-mortar I think Amazon is going to have more than a thousand brick-and-mortar stores by the end of this year, combination of goes Whole Foods in some other expansion of bookstore Concepts but a thousand stores is a very meaningful brick-and-mortar retailers so if you go to like the the NRF top list of retailers and you sort it by number of stores a thousand stores makes you about the the 67th, largest retailer in the US by number of stores and so in addition to all the other areas where Amazon's excelling in. And dominating I feel like eating that thousands door threshold like definitely makes you as usually credible brick-and-mortar retailer and I think they're going to get there this year. Scot: [54:04] Do you want to throw and and in there about. Jason: [54:07] And Eddie Lampert is not going to want to space exploration. Scot: [54:10] Okay alright I almost got that in here. Jason: [54:14] So then my new strategy is just to take your predictions that didn't happen from the year before and doubled down on them. So you last year said Walmart was going to make a big acquisition and you highlighted some of the last mile companies and you got credit for the making the big acquisition but it wasn't the last mile company, I think they're going to fulfill the other half of your prediction this year and actually buy a Last Mile company. And that's potentially potentially instacart Postmates taskrabbit but I also think something like that. Adda live wood would totally toy fit in there so I'm I'm sure we'll see Walmart both organically grow and acquire. Let more last-mile capability this year. [55:07] Number 3 I am sad to say based on our previous conversations but I I think we are going to see another big beloved brand go bankrupt this year so I actually think. In any way I do I told you I think that it was an unexpectedly good economy this year. I am not as confident that we're going to sustain that for all of 2019 and there are you know it again I think that the the booming economy hasn't been. Equally generous to all retailer so I do think there's some retards have had a tough going and I think as both get tightened a little bit that potential will be the last. The last straw so you know I certainly think the department stores. You know is a vulnerable category United by JCPenney certainly is vulnerable I think any of the category killers that used to win based on assortment you know aren't winning an assortment anymore do the online so you know that could be one of the. The Office Products companies are Bed Bath & Beyond or some of those guys and you know when we talk about department stores. You don't one super story brand in the US that you like I think is has a bunch of money a bunch of. Debt due in 2019 and seemed to be having some some substantial disagreements with her creditors at the moment is Neiman Marcus so I would be sad to see them go but it seems like. [56:35] Like they're going to have to do pretty well tough to forestall that so I'm afraid we'll see another another big bankruptcy this year. Scot: [56:43] How many demons are there are they only like four big cities room. Jason: [56:47] So it's not a huge footprint unless it's 40 spores and they own a couple other Concepts as well but yeah. Scot: [56:57] Predictions for 4. Jason: [56:59] I feel like I might have made a similar version of this before but the. I'm bringing it back so mobile the mobile Gap getting narrower is my is my official predictions I think aided by a progressive web apps and payment API we are going to see. Mobile really catch up to desktop in terms of conversion rate and also total sale so I guess I'll see you in my dreams specific prediction is. That we have more mobile Commerce than desktop Commerce in if you take out tablets in 29th. Scot: [57:40] And then last but not least. Jason: [57:42] Yeah I'm taking you or negative predictions to the extreme and I'm just saying there's a bunch of pads that I don't think will will. Be significant and in 2019 the first one is still going to be hyped this year and still going to be a fad. I actually don't think there's going to be a ton of like customer-facing AI experiences or are frankly even way better personalization experiences in 2019. I think we will see more more chatter around social commerce but it's still not going to catch on. I don't think going to see any meaningful Traction in in VR for Commerce. And I certainly don't think blockchain is going to be a very important element for most of Commerce so that you know there's the ones you you all of those Technologies are ones you hear people talk about a lot and. Like I frequently intended rough drafts of retail Trends decks with all these things in a minute I just don't think any of them are going to be very Signet. Scot: [58:44] Any any bonuses you want to put on there. Jason: [58:47] I do the you talk about Amazon being forced to break out their ad Revenue do I actually think they're going to get forced to break out the revenue related to Prime Membership. And I hope that happens cuz I think it would be super interesting to see what percentage of. Of their their sales come from Prime and and you don't total total Prime Revenue in those sorts of things would be fascinating to know. Scot: [59:15] Did you include, like a whole p&l there or just really Prime revenue and sales around Prime. Jason: [59:22] Yeah I don't know how specific I want to get on bonus I don't think I official purposes I won't say piano but I hope that they have to get as granny or as. Using Prime members as a segment for reporting Revenue. So that's what I got hopefully it's better than last year hopefully I am I'm not getting. I hope I am enjoying next year's version of the show more than I did this year's but the time we're finally to the part that I'm really looking forward to which is what Nostradamus thinks is going to happen for next year so Scott what do we got. Scot: [1:00:00] Yeah it's always hard to follow up on him set up pretty good predictions and if you like last year the, the chessboard was more clearly laid out for me than it is this year and and the the tilt of the board is really hard so you know we're coming off a year where the economy was smoking and wages are going up but then we have a lot of changes in the political scene there's lots of talk of impeachment there's like all kinds of craziness the garments closes record this really hard to know which way the economy is going. But you know whenever I'm on kind of the fence on these things I tend to be an optimist so it's my heart for real blood so I'm going to lean towards the positive side of things I think you know hopefully we navigate to all that I know, Tailwind of a good economy in 2019 as an industry which I think we all agree would be good so. My first prediction so following on that optimystix thing by first one's kind of negative so like you I agree we haven't seen you know. [1:01:06] The end of this kind of I think it's a Dominos that are falling and I don't think a lot of people even kind of put that together yet so like you seen Sears file Chapter 11 I don't think many stores come out of that I think we're down to a handful of Sears that's going to put pressure on malls I think that puts more pressure on JCPenney. If you look there stocks already down from for $2. The other two are heading into a delisting scenario below a dollar I don't know what's going on with their creditors but all these old-school guys Leverage. So you get into the stuff spiral it sure does feel like JCPenney's stuck into that. Spiral they have 860 stores. [1:01:45] Macy's is Macy's is doing really well today, but once you get stuck into this kind of swirling drain of mall-based retail it's really hard to get out of there and I do worry that they kind of there a domino that falls in there. [1:02:01] I've already closed some stores to trim their footprint and their 660 more so I don't think they would do bankruptcy everything but I think they may have to sell some of those stores are closing so I'm going to say at least 5,000 more stores and if we can ever find the square footage I think it'll be, about as bad as 2019 so I think 2017-18 was a huge step up 8 1617 and 17 18 wheeler big steps up I think we'll go sideways which is still going to be pretty bad though because that step up Rick kind of this 5000 larger stores whatever the equivalent Sopranos that I do believe was larger than 2017 just my first pregnancy second one is you know your your buddy Scott Galway also known as Professor go away he is really big on TV telling everyone that the government's Crackdown on Amazon and for some spin-off AWS he's backed off that a little bit and now he's talking about well maybe they'll have to have tracking stock I'm going to predict this is one of my anti production so you can Amazon doesn't do those things but this will be the year that they know that adds does get broken out and I'll be specific here as its own p&l kind of line out of the bath report because when I kind of build a spreadsheet and it got to take. Cloud stuff which is AWS and how I think adds is growing and I think. [1:03:30] Off the record I think you for ads will probably do as much as the rest of 2018 which is going to blow people's minds but it makes total sense, me and probably you cuz that's what you would do if you were brand new grass is so when I put in a spreadsheet and track them I believe it's going to be about the same size as AWS by like 20 22 or 23 1 and I've seen a couple of Reports say the same thing, that is my second prediction and just to recap it again they're going to have to break out they won't and I put an end in here in tribute to. To Jason they're not going to spin or tracking stock AWS but they will have to break out ads. What's your prediction is I think too kind of the companies out there and I've talked about Amazon and it's in the ones that are struggling on Mosside you have kind of eBay and Alibaba they had come like what I would call up computer in 2018 it is kind of you know it wasn't a great year it wasn't a bad year but they both had they have type beat up over the last year at least companies both have leaders that they want to grow and be aggressive, I feel like something's going to happen there and when I kind of think about it I've always thought this would be a perfect kind of combination so these these two companies just feel like they belong together to me so I'm going to call that there is going to be a combination there. [1:04:52] Number for and I know she didn't really make platform prediction the last platform that last chair kind of out there is Shopify now all the cloud and infection on this all all the cloud guys seem to have kind of bed on their platform rent and I will get them all but I think, so then you may be single who's left by like a Shopify and then another footnote is shopify's really expensive assets oh yeah honest AC it's like for 5 billion dollars but it has to be small revenue is going to use super high valuation so whoever buys this that really kind of limits the number of companies that buy it has to be super my prediction here is you have the ad platforms and specifically I'm thinking Google and Facebook, they're just getting pummeled right now on the ad side from data collection and and you know all the things about Russia hacking and all this in front of Congress just getting beat up I think if I had 100% of my revenue from ads and I was one of those two companies I would be willing to spend a very large sum to diversify That rumney Base because I do think that business model is going to be under external pressures for a while to mow predictions I think that last seat is taken by either fat Facebook or Google. [1:06:14] To be an ally bother someone so I'm not to be super specific there but I do think Shopify gets taken out this year and my sis production is kind of an opposite one of you so we're going to misaligned on this one I think Walmart has made a couple a lot of big bets over the last year and it's just really hard to get all this right so so spending that much on Flipkart I think Amazon shareholder base is in Amazon Walmart shoulder base isn't Amazon shareholder base and I think they look at that and they're kind of like scratching their head and thinking wow I could open a lot more stores I could then X Y and Z you could have written a dividend check so that they have a much different old school master bass been Amazon does and I think that's going to put pressure on them this year so it's a, prediction is that they're going to stumble so I think their growth rates going too slow I think they got a lot of early wins from Anna digitalizing the groceries I think a lot of those are one-time pops and, they are going to get stuck in that to keep that growth up at that and I'm north of what they said 30 40%. [1:07:18] They have to do some big m&a Flipkart has to go right zlata has to go right there and I don't think we have that flexibility to navigate to that I think they're going to have a run, I don't want that to happen so let me be clear I don't want that to happen I just think it's the natural progression of these things when you have a year where you put a bunch of bats on the table, your tab another year we're not all those bets are going to go well and truly they they're probably brace for that I think. [1:07:46] It's not going to be there nothing about a business or anything but it is going to be a tough year for them I think I'll do a cover set. Jason: [1:07:53] Interesting well I think that's a terrific sort of spectrum of predictions between the two of us and that is going to be a perfect place to leave it in the reason I say that is because we always right these show outline that we intend to be 30 45 minutes and I believe I predicted this show would be 70 minutes and right now we're at 67 minutes so I'm calling it I can be right about one thing it's how long the show is but if you are disappointed that we could have shortened you there was something you wanted to discuss that we didn't get to or you have any questions about the show or ideas for future shows feel free to keep the dialogue going on Facebook you can jump on their pop a question will be happy to chat with you as always we greatly appreciate those five star reviews on iTunes that's a wonderful belated Christmas present to Scott or I so feel free to the jump on there and we would greatly appreciate it. Scot: [1:08:52] Thanks everyone for joining so hope you enjoyed the first show 2019 happy New Year and we look forward to spending 2019 with you talking about what's going on in e-commerce retail and the rest of e-commerce insurance. Jason: [1:09:08] Absolutely and so until next time happy commercing.

Naoki Hiroshima さんをゲストに迎えて、山火事、Amazon, MacBook, iPhone, Netflix, コードレビューなどについて話しました。 Show Notes California fires Customizing the Infograph face on Apple Watch Series 4 AirNow Amazon Logistics Amazon selects New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters Amazon now directly sells Apple products - The Verge Creative Selection キャッチ=22 OnePlus 6T Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a point about housing for Congress instant-runoff voting Microsoft Teams Google Hangouts Chat Vic Gundotra

En este viernes de miscelánea recupero el tema de Amazon Logistics y las consecuencias que pueda tener para el negocio de Amazon. También hablaremos de la finalización (por fin) de la compra de Shazam por parte de Apple, de la adquisición de la app ASTRO por parte de Slack y de la reapertura de algunas Apple Store y lo que eso puede suponer para los servicios que ofrecen.Espero vuestros comentarios en https://emilcar.fm/daily donde también encontraréis los enlaces de este capítulo y otros medios para contactar conmigo. Y no olvidéis suscribiros a http://focus.emilcar.es, donde encontraréis todo tipo de video-tutoriales y además Weekly, mi podcast semanal sobre iOS y mucho más.

En este viernes de miscelánea recupero el tema de Amazon Logistics y las consecuencias que pueda tener para el negocio de Amazon. También hablaremos de la finalización (por fin) de la compra de Shazam por parte de Apple, de la adquisición de la app ASTRO por parte de Slack y de la reapertura de algunas Apple Store y lo que eso puede suponer para los servicios que ofrecen.Espero vuestros comentarios en https://emilcar.fm/daily donde también encontraréis los enlaces de este capítulo y otros medios para contactar conmigo. Y no olvidéis suscribiros a http://focus.emilcar.es, donde encontraréis todo tipo de video-tutoriales y además Weekly, mi podcast semanal sobre iOS y mucho más.

Hoy toca hablar de Amazon: de su nueva y distópica tienda en el Soho, de las perspectivas de Amazon Echo y Alexa en España y de mi primera y desastrosa experiencia recibiendo un paquete vía Amazon Logistics.Espero vuestros comentarios en https://emilcar.fm/daily donde también encontraréis los enlaces de este episodio y otros medios para contactar conmigo. Y no olvidéis suscribiros a http://focus.emilcar.es, donde encontraréis todo tipo de video-tutoriales y además Weekly, mi podcast semanal sobre iOS y mucho más.

Hoy toca hablar de Amazon: de su nueva y distópica tienda en el Soho, de las perspectivas de Amazon Echo y Alexa en España y de mi primera y desastrosa experiencia recibiendo un paquete vía Amazon Logistics.Espero vuestros comentarios en https://emilcar.fm/daily donde también encontraréis los enlaces de este episodio y otros medios para contactar conmigo. Y no olvidéis suscribiros a http://focus.emilcar.es, donde encontraréis todo tipo de video-tutoriales y además Weekly, mi podcast semanal sobre iOS y mucho más.

Was kann ein Plattform-Player herkömmlichen Paketdiensten entgegensetzen? In den neuesten Exchanges sprechen Jochen Krisch und Marcel Weiß über die Fortschritte bei Amazon Logistics und die turbulenten Jahre, die der Logistikbranche und mit ihr dem Onlinehandel bevorstehen. Werbepartner: * Vodafone Red Business XL Plus, der Geschäftskunden-Tarif mit unbegrenztem Highspeed-Datenvolumen https://vodafone.de/podcast * iAdvize – verbindet Kunden mit den besten Experten und schafft ein neues Level der Customer Experience. Anzutreffen ist iAdvize auf der Dmexco am Stand E–029 in Halle 7: mehr Informationen hier: https://www.iadvize.com/de/?utm_campaign=DE-New_positioning&utm_source=excitingcommerce.de&utm_medium=referral Email an exchanges@iadvize.com für Whitepaper zu den Experten.

Shipping With Amazon will soon kick off in the USA, with implications for the major parcel carriers. Joining me to separate the hype from reality are Marek Rożycki and Dean Maciuba from Last Mile Experts. They have extensive experience in parcel delivery, including Amazon Logistics and FedEx.

EP112 - Annual Predictions for 2018   2017 Recap – Predictions made on episode 64 Jason Retailers truly embrace Omni-channel  (Attribution/Inventory/promotion/pricing – YES A/I – Bots for Customer Service but probably not for transactions, lots of buzz on big data AI but no game changing new experience – No Personalization – to eliminate friction, not drive new demand.  Data integration not some new product or touchpoint –No Laggard categories will discover digital (Grocery, Luxury, QSR) – Yes Microservices – 50% of new platform implementations will be cloud, and Micro-service based solutions will start to emerge – Partial Jason 2017 Score 2.5/5 Scot The IPO market is going to be open, but the e-commerce companies will get crowded out by the big tech unicorns like Uber, Snap, pinterest, airbnb, spotify and the like – Partial Amazon will start to chip away at the Fedex and UPS’s of the world with a service like this in the US.  – No Machine learning is the new ‘network effect’ – everyone has caught onto the power and competitive moats available from ML and that’s going to be a big theme.  Every vendor you work with from carts to images to upsells to recommendations to search engine results to whatever is going to HAVE to have a ML capability to stay current and keep YOU competitive. – Yes We’re going to see e-commerce growth accelerate pretty materially in 2017.  We’ve been in this 15% band and I think we will see there was a move up in 2H16 to high teens and we could see 20’s in 2017 – Yes eBay – it’s a do or die year for ebay, they could potential partner with Alibaba. – No Scot 2017 Score 2.5/5 2018 Predictions Scot Mallageddon 2.0 – We saw 7000 stores close in 2017, I think this accelerates in 2018 as the 30-40% of weak malls fail and we end up with 9000 closures. Amazon will NOT buy another offline retailer, triples down on private label. I’m going to re-up on my Amazon logistics prediction, I think I was just a bit too early on that one, but I’ll make it bolder, that Amazon will squarely get in the last mile business in 2018 and compete with FedEx and UPS.Amazon’s ad group will get so large that they have to break out details about it and everyone will be shocked at how large it has gotten so quickly Walmart will make a big M+A – top candidates would be Instacart, postmates and eBay. Somebody acquires magento, or they go public. Bonus – Amazon comes out with alexa powered wireless earbuds – because I want them. Jason Grocery gets disrupted by digital (led by curbside pickup).  Digital grocery doubles in US, at least one delivery firm peters out. Drug gets disrupted by digital. AI Gap – biggest trend of 2018 Voice – Huge but not for commerce. Payments – Retail digital wallets die (except Starbucks/Walmart/Amazon).  Bitcoin tanks. Bonus – Amazon launches a wearable. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 112 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature – Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 112 being recorded on Wednesday January 3rd 2018 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your Tahoe Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Happy New Year Jason and happy New Year to Jason and Scott show listeners Welcome to our first show recorded in 2018. Jason: [0:50] It’s very cool I’m excited to start the new year I feel like it’s going to be another action packed one in our in our jonra. Scot: [0:59] Yeah that’s the fun thing about retail I feel like we could do a daily podcast weekly is even hard to catch all the news that’s going on. Jason: [1:07] That is true but then I feel like there’s a lot of fans begging that me not to do any more than I already do but that was might just be me and not. Scot: [1:17] Cool. What’s up long-time listeners will know that it is a regular feature of our show that the first episode of January is our annual prediction show so this is our third shot at this Jason. So pretty exciting so let’s take it off by looking at last year’s predictions and seeing how we did Jason was start with you. Jason: [1:45] This is the part of the show I hate. Scot: [1:47] So if listeners are really really want to learn more about these things you can go back to episode 64 that was the last year’s preview show and I and you can listen to that and see how we did and 16 compared to 17 in here the 17 predictions you don’t have to do that there were going to summarize them for you here but if you really are curious about anything we bring up and want more color, you can go back to episode 64. Okay Jason last year you and the way we did this as we had 5 predictions and a bonus so effectively 6 predictions so let’s go through them last year your. Top prediction was that retailers will truly Embrace omni-channel and you talked about attribution inventory promotions and pricing. How do you feel that prediction did through 2017. Jason: [2:33] Yep. So I generally feel good about that prediction I’m calling that went to win there a bunch of things that happened last year that were, probably hard for people to observe, but but most retailers did get more sophisticated about their omni-channel attribution models we saw a ton of retailers move to Universal inventory we saw a lot more Universal pricing and then some of the the highly visible things we saw were like Target made two major Acquisitions in shipped and, Grand Junction to improve their omni-channel Wal-Mart rolled out of town of omni-channel initiatives with the pickup towers and express returns and discounted ship-to-store, Kroger and Costco both rolled out curbside pickup so I think across-the-board I’m giving that one true. Scot: [3:26] Yeah but when I go to Best Buy they still can’t look up my rewards number and if I do an online order they have no idea what happened to the cash register traffic crazy but I’ll still give you this one. Jason: [3:37] I think there are still a lot lots of gaps but I would argue in your specific example that’s Alessa not embracing on me channel cuz I would argue, Best Buy does embrace quite a bit about me channel it’s a date I’ll retailer still have a ton of data silos regardless of Channel and sew-in your point like, rewards just aren’t willing a greater to the store and that’s a shame. Scot: [3:59] 4 meter Omni channel is breaking out of this data silos. Jason: [4:03] I only want to live in your happy world I do. Scot: [4:06] Cool alright so so far that’s one win and 0 losses. Jason: [4:12] Feel free to stop here if we want. Scot: [4:14] And that’s it well unfortunately we’ve wasted another 5 minutes of your time. But seriously your second prediction was calling for Bots for customer service but not transactions lots of buzz on big data and AI but no game-changing new experiences. Jason: [4:35] Yep so even though I kind of Madhuri to the prediction by saying more buzzed than game-changing experiences I’m still giving myself a false on this one because I think it was, even more hype and the last tangible stuff then I was predicting so I think you don’t right out of the gate, there’s a new chat services and there was a lot of hype about new customer service, offerings on those chat services but they were universally stupid and none of them got embraced by customers and you know after that initial hype I just don’t think we saw a lot of a lot of traction so I’m giving the whole the whole box thing in 2017 did not happen. Scot: [5:19] Even Facebook seems to not be talking about it as much and didn’t one of their big Partners kind of shut down the bar that was it 800-Flowers or everlane or one of those like one of the launch Partners kind of said yeah we’re not doing this anymore. Jason: [5:33] Yeah I think that was everlane 800-Flowers is famous or notorious for being one of the first adopters of everything and so it’s almost. It’s not predictive of something being successful the fact that 800-Flowers is one Embraces it cuz they they like to be the first mover. Scot: [5:51] Shut it off though. Jason: [5:53] Yeah no absolute. Scot: [5:54] Tahlequah this is like it’s either hard to maintain or actually bad customer experience or something I don’t know. Third is one of your favorite topics personalization, so you said to eliminate friction but not really Drive new to me and data integration not some new product or touch point I don’t know what any of that means so maybe recap what you were thinking there. Jason: [6:17] Yeah so I hate talking about personalization because it’s a amorphous sort of thing, and so what would I said what would I try to say in the prediction was that I think we’re going to see a lot of better personalization but that doesn’t equal like some magic new widget on the web website that just automatically more personalized than the old widget, what I was really expecting to see is retailers merge a lot of their Silo data to provide, more seamless experiences and eliminate friction across the board and you unfortunately already alluded to a perfect example of that not happening, that you you went into Best Buy and they couldn’t couldn’t figure out your year membership Rewards. Status with Best Buy and that’s because all those their systems are siloed at Best Buy, and so in my mind. My prediction was that a lot of those eyelids would get eliminated in 2017 and while I could point to a couple of retailers that had made some progress in eliminating those silos, I still think there’s a ton of silos and I think we all at Shoppers put up with a lot of ridiculous friction that we don’t even realize, because of how at retailers of organize their their systems in their data and I I just don’t think we made near as much, progresses I optimistically hope for 2017 so I’m I’m giving myself a fail on this one as well. Scot: [7:48] Wright’s that’s one win to faience your 4th prediction this was a good one ladder categories will discover digital and you mentioned to grocery luxury and Quick Serve restaurants. Jason: [8:01] Yep and I feel like this was going to get me back to even I I gave this prediction a true, for those of you that follow the grocery category you may have heard of the Amazon made an acquisition in the space in the whole food so that was certainly. A grocery retailer discovering digital we also saw a huge investment from Kroger and Walmart and grocery, that US are as a Quick Serve restaurants and they all Embrace digital in a big way in 2017 so both McDonald’s and Taco Bell rolled out, Order ahead of course the the Weider a farm before last year and in this was Starbucks but most of the traditional to SRS, Nina played significant catch up in 2017 and then also a lot of the luxury Brands got more serious about digital for a long time then they over it we said that, digital was eroding to their their brands and that they they wanted the experience to be in the dressing room and not online and you know all of those old luxury houses that used to say that launched, direct-to-consumer e-commerce sites in 2017 some of them even started started, toe dipping on some of the the marketplaces and and so again you know I think across-the-board grocery Luxury Inn Key West are where three categories that made big strides forward in digital in 2017 so I call that trip. Scot: [9:30] I agree that even better than the order had at McDonald’s have you had one of the touchscreen kind of order things those are pretty cool. Jason: [9:37] Yep absolutely. Scot: [9:39] Less errors on your order. Jason: [9:41] To management that you and I are a couple dialogues on, I know twittering about some of the bad G Management in traditional retail seems like you got a lot of bad physical retail experience is rightly and those those kiosks are all part of the wait time management system at at McDonald’s which is very clever. Scot: [10:00] Alright so let’s see we are at 2 and 2 now and so your V addiction, was extremely retailgeek e microservices 50% of new platform implementations will be cloud and microservice based Solutions will start to emerge. Jason: [10:18] Yep and so for those of you that that aren’t Super retailgeek E like this is the notion that most people that run the e-commerce site, own the software and run it on a server that they own like either on their their services are in a Datacenter that they rent in so this this prediction was really that like half of all the new platforms, would instead be in the cloud so you know Amazon web services or Google Cloud platform or Microsoft azure, and that most of them instead of being this big monolithic piece of software would be these newer platforms that are kind of a collection of little api’s or little services, that you got most think of his Legos that you snap together to create your experiences and. [11:05] I think these are both super important Trends if you talk to the CIO at any retailer like they’re their the trends that they’re falling and it’s what they hope to add a brace in the future. But in 2017 at all amounted to more talk than action so. We we actually didn’t see a lot of rhe platforming in 2017 impact in many ways I’d say it was one of the slowest years in The Last 5 Years in RI platforming. So it’s hard to call this trend a complete win when there just weren’t that many new platforms. It is true that of the new platforms the overwhelming majority were on the cloud so I kind of get myself credit for that. Never retailers like Nordstrom that was on this podcast last year and they talked about migrating everything from an on-premise solution to a cloud-based solution. We we’ve had a billy May on that on the show who now run is the CEO at Sur La Table and they’re in the process of moving to a cloud-based solution but, they just weren’t a ton of replat for Mains and the micro service-based architectures while everyone loves talking about. They had fewer wins in 2017 than I anticipated so I kind of gave myself a half credit on this one Cloud yes microservices know. Scot: [12:26] Yeah I think I learned from last year to be less for Bose in my my predictions gives you more chances to be, so then your bonus was around payments to another one your favorite topics and you said kind of on the topic of digital wallets that something other than PayPal Amazon will achieve 10% of us e-commerce transactions excluding Amazon such as Chase Walmart Apple pay, Apple sound Safari or the w3c web payment standards could gain traction so give us an update on how you did on that one. Jason: [13:06] Yeah so that one would be a mixed one that’s another example of not writing very smart predictions, it turns out I don’t have a way to measure whether or not specifically say that we did I will say like that Walmart pay actually got more traction and Buzz than I certainly was expecting, but of course nowhere near 10% of all non Amazon transactions, and in the one that that I haven’t seen any data about consumer adoption on, but has gotten a lot of adoption with e-commerce platform supporting it is is the thing I reference there the w3c, web payment standard and so this is a a super quick recap for listeners this is he, a new standard for typing your credit card into a web browser it’s an open standard that’s embraced by the 8th the the standards community that publish HTML, it’s now been implemented by Google so it’s in all the Chrome browsers, it is in the Microsoft browser it’s it’s not an apple browser yet, but it makes it dramatically easier to store your credit card on your local machine and safely. Automatically enter it in in websites when you make payments and so. [14:39] Again like all the Shopify site supported all the demandware site supported a lot of the big e-commerce sites have added support for it, so on the one hand. More than 10% of the top 500 websites probably support it but we don’t know yet whether whether consumers are leveraging it or not so. It was a bonus so maybe the score doesn’t matter but it definitely felt like a poorly worded prediction and you don’t mix results. Scot: [15:08] Yeah I don’t know I wonder if do you think that stripe in Braintree have gotten over 10% cuz they’re doing the majority of Mobile payment. Jason: [15:17] They are but I am not sure I consider stripe or Braintree a wallet, so as a payment processor like they’re they’re like stripe in particular is killing it on the long tail, Braintree is a little more focused on the mid-market or Enterprise, companies that let you know there’s some Visa owns a company called cybersource which does great on the on the Enterprise side they all have big market share but they what they don’t let you do is store your credit card once, and then leverage it across multiple sites that you shop and so they don’t like, remove a ton of friction from the e-commerce experience because they let you reuse your payment information over and over again. Scot: [16:02] When when a side I know you know this but Apple pay rolled out their cash peace and they have been pushing it super hard I can’t, you know I buy phone alerts me every 5 seconds I need to set up Apple pay now and I’ve actually it’s kind of sad story I’ve given up on Apple pay because I’ve had to set it up so many times between my watch and Os installation like I finally give up on the the the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze on that one but it’s interesting that now that I’m out of it that it really suddenly aggressively wants me to set it up so they must Apple kind of is woken up, Bond Apple pay stub. Jason: [16:37] Yeah that like my my like brief editorial on that like that they have a very good experience, under certain circumstances, and they’re they’re doing a good job of expanding those circumstances so this year they want to the ability to to use Apple pay in a browser which was a huge deal and it in late in the year they watch ability to do peer to peer payments with Apple pay in that potentially huge deal, but the problem the fundamental problem with the Apple pay is, you know at best and only works for the subset of the world that are that are in the Apple echo system, and some of these painted things require even a much narrower subset like only on the latest Hardware that has a particular chip in it or only on the very latest version of the operating system in the latest version of the Safari browser, and so it just, it it’s not apples goal to be a world dominant ubiquitous payment system right I get it really is just a utility for for Apple users. And I think that that limits its its broad appeal. Scot: [17:43] So I just kind of keeping score there I think you got a solid 2 to 3 out of your 6 predictions so it will give you a kind of 50%. Jason: [17:51] Yeah that was basically my performance in college so I’m okay with it. Scot: [17:55] I think it’s a baseball baseball you be here. Jason: [17:58] Yeah that would be much better hitter than I was a student hi Scott you I think of is much more cerebral than me so let’s see how you did. [18:09] I like setting the table. You’re super smart and you’re always like really really prescient about your prediction so, I’m sure you nailed it I think your first prediction was about the IPO markets and that there was going to be a lot more, action in the IPO Market in 2017 but the e-commerce companies might get crowded out of the space as of these big Uber snap Pinterest Airbnb spotify’s in the like all do their IPOs side note did I hear a rumor that Spotify, maybe Miss 2017 and just just filed this year. Scot: [18:44] I know why why could they not do it earlier but I don’t know where is an Uber would have filed if they didn’t have to go to there. Poop show that they’re Lawton right now that with the name cian all snap made it out and. Actually did pretty poorly and effectively close the idea window for the big guys and then they all have their own issues so I mentioned Uber kind of imploded on some things there I don’t airbnb’s is prior. Great candidate for next year Pinterest I don’t know. Were there on the revenue they change their Chief Revenue people a lot which makes me nervous. And then as you mentioned spotify’s filed the. You’re kind of the thing I got wrong here is Stitch fix made it out we talked about a lot of the show and I’m super happy for them, another one that was frequently mentioned as a possible IPO can it was chewy and they got Acquired and then Casper is always been kind of out there as as Dollar Shave Club Dollar Shave Club good acquired to also I’m so. You know I think the IPOs to watch for next year and e-commerce world are going to be. Casper and then some watches his big guys and how they perform so. It’s worded the wording on the sun makes it hard to know so the window did open so I get credit for that but I was kind of wrong on the mix of companies that got out so I gave my car myself half credit on that. Jason: [20:07] That seems fair so your second prediction I was when we talked about a lot on the show, Amazon will start to chip away at FedEx and UPS, are logistic services in the US and you convoluted we made it a 2018 prediction you said hey and 2818 Amazon could even expand into peer-to-peer in River suggest X. Scot: [20:32] Yeah they I’m going to get myself a fail on this one when we talk about new predictions I want to talk about it again but when things. The trend that we talked about on the show but I think it’s good to summarize it here the amount of consumers that want. Things over to them is outpacing the investment that FedEx and UPS are making and also USPS so there something has to give and it some point. Amazon being the largest I’d I’m fully. Going to committed that they’re going to build their own capability was flexing what would happen in 2017 is flex was started influxes an Uber light delivery system eating 1099 drivers they have an app. Amazon signals to them and then they come and make deliveries they started this for Prime now and increasingly through 2017 we saw Amazon using Flex the driver system for just normal deliveries as well. And even in the holiday ever heard a lot of reports of a mixture so flex and then actually fulfillment center employees doing deliveries and all kinds of things so I think. I think some of this happened behind the scenes but it wasn’t kind of to the degree I was thinking in this year so it’s something’s going to give so we’ll see. Thought I’ll get myself a fail this year. Jason: [21:48] Tough grader but I like it, your third prediction was about machine learning and you you said that was going to be the new network effect that everyone’s trying to recognize the power and competitive mode that are available for machine learning and it’s going to be a dick theme, every vendor you work with some Cars 2 images recommendations engines you know search engines are all going to have to have machine one and capability. Test a current then and keep keep their customers competitive. Scot: [22:18] Yeah again I should have been less wordy on that one but. I’m going to say when you when you look at kind of the cloud vendors out there so I’ll I’ll say Amazon for sure is all in on machine learning. As part of their Cloud conference which is called AWS reinvent. It was all machine learning all the time pretty much most of the new Innovations they talked about over there is multiple tracks but the biggest track was machine learning Google this year at their annual conference the kind of said we went from. You know search first it’s a mobile first to machine learning first and they they’re putting. You all their resources into Ai and machine learning and then if we if we can look at the the. E-commerce endures you can’t throw a stick it in these trade shows without hitting a machine learning or AI vendors to everyone that I run into every vendor is now fully is probably even. Little bit bubbly you know so it seems hard that all this can live up to the hype at this point. But you know what I look at the platform guys you certainly know more about this than I do but but Salesforce is done a lot of really interesting things we had Rob on the show. I kind of talked about this a little bit so they have Einstein is there a machine learning platform and weeding Dad into the platform previously known as demand where is pretty interesting and I think very indicative of what we’re going to be here I’m as as goes even deeper. So I’m giving myself a yes on this one. Jason: [23:48] .. I think that’s fair I think you nailed it that the the vendors were all embracing it and I and I think there’s a rain everyone did embrace it exactly you said the big vendors I think we’re all in with like, a huge amount of effort and then I think the long tail vendors, certainly added machine learning to their marketing and nothing else so I certainly think you nailed it there I’m not sure if there was, ubiquitous progress in terms of the actual retailers and customers embracing all those vendors Solutions in in 2017 Infiniti that’s what you predicted. Scot: [24:22] Yeah at least separate data silos you talk about to be a problem you know so if you don’t have the single view of the customer machine learning can’t really get it. How’s it going because it’s going to see little pieces what’s happening there so so that this can be an impediment to so he’s Advanced Technologies with the traditional omni-channel multi-data Silo retailer. Jason: [24:42] Yep so then you’re 4th prediction, was what I think we’re all rooting for we’re going to see e-commerce growth accelerate material in 2017 and so you were saying hey it’s been at 15% the last couple years, will see you move up in the second half of 2016 in the high teens and we we could even see the 20% sin 2017. Scot: [25:08] Yeah what I learned about this one was I should have thought something that I would know by the time the next show world around so we the jury is out on this one cuz we just don’t know how the year ended up. Receive data out of MasterCard comscore a couple those folks that are pointing to iTunes and I’m seeing 1819 % the one Dana Point I want to see is Amazon. I think it’s pretty sure that Amazon is going to come in north of 20% but I think there’s a shot and released just talking about. The strength of prime and your 5 billion Prime things and I don’t know. Nursing Amazon kind of leaning into it like there right now so it makes me feel like. [25:53] Maybe their Q4 came in more towards 30% and that would make me feel a lot better that that Savannah’s on comes in kind of north of 25 then I think the whole holiday for everyone came in. 20% something myself yes based on the data available and kind of the body language coming out of Amazon right now. Jason: [26:10] I think that’s fair, incident in your V prediction was about eBay in you you basically said it was a big infection year for eBay assorted do or die and then they could even potentially do a partnership with someone like Alibaba. Scot: [26:29] Yeah yeah that didn’t happen so I guess it wasn’t a do-or-die you’re so you know on the negative side they lost how Lawton who it was so great leader there. Friend of both of ours is over at Macy’s now so it’s a win for Macy’s but you don’t know company is one person so you may is doing a lot of great things are getting more structured data from sellers their category tent is. Things to do while they are improving their relationships with sellers they’re improving buyer. Programs that are implementing a prime like program so they’re doing a lot of good stuff it just seems like when you when you look at this kind of Battle of Titans that goes on there and you’ve got. You know the the Google’s the Amazons the Walmart this guy’s just have so many resources compared to eBay now eBay’s kind of. Small in that world it just feels like they have more leverage is part of something else but I called it wrong so I’m going to get myself a big fat zero on that. Jason: [27:26] Fair enough and then your bonus prediction was awesomely bold Amazon will release another phone. Scot: [27:34] Yeah this is Phil I kind of thought it would be interesting to have internet to have Alexa to swing back and visit the phone and make it a kind of an Alexa oriented phone didn’t do it so I was wrong. Jason: [27:48] I like the prediction nevertheless and if I’m doing my math right that put you also at, about two and a half out of 5 so we sort of sort of both finish the same I don’t want to say tide because it wasn’t a contest. Scot: [28:04] Yeah but together we had a hundred percent that’s why piece of people listen to the show. Jason: [28:11] But enough about the past let’s talk about what’s going to happen in 2018. Scot: [28:18] Yep so so I had some predictions to walk us through here so first of all I am reading a lot of articles that say. Retail is on the upswing and everything’s great. You have that happens every Q4 and I think it’s going to be short-lived I think we’re going to see Mama getting to oh this year last year we saw 7,000 stores close. And I think you sent me more than that they close this year so I’m saying you know, I still think there’s 30 to 40% malls out there that are very weak and failing and I’m going to say the store closure goes up and I just kind of picked a number because I learn to be more specific I sent from last year’s predictions, I meant to say we have 9,000 or higher closures by the end of 2018 so it will be an even worse year than 2017. I get a lot of tweets from these kinds of predictions. I want stores be open but I just think it’s the reality that things are going a little bit worse in the the physical. Store World especially malls before they get better I do think this is not an official prediction but I think you know 2018 oh probably be the low point then we’ll we’ll come back out of it. Jason: [29:30] Yeah I’m going to pile on your prediction in just say that, both are true like retail could do better in 2018 we have so many stores in us that 9000 Source could close and retail sales could still go up, so so that the two aren’t necessarily completely related but for sure seems like there’s still a bunch of vulnerable malls and vulnerable department stores in it, frankly it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the year we see Sears close its doors. Scot: [30:00] The second one in this was kind of. I was going to make this anyway but today in the press a friend of ours Gene Munster was out saying hey I think Amazon is going to buy Target and and he had kind of some interesting reasons behind that. Scott Galloway is been kind of pounding his chest that they’re going to buy either Macy’s or Nordstrom’s or something like that I’m going to go out and say I think Amazon’s plate is full with Whole Foods they did that very specifically for grocery, and they’re not going to buy another on. Online retailer of size I think they’ll still open their own book stores will Pisces some more of that as grocery go kind of things and that kind of thing but I just don’t see them buying another brick and mortar retailer, Chicago long with that I think that they had huge success with private label and they’re going to Triple down on that so kind of a double Amazon prediction there. Jason: [30:56] Nice I like it I like you being contrarian. Scot: [31:01] Write number three for me is I’m going to go back to my Amazon Logistics prediction because I think this is inevitable because of the you know what he charged this out the lines have to cross at some point at some point the number of packages, to be delivered even by Amazon alone exceed the capacity to be delivered out there Amazon I’m sure he’s aware of that and you know if I’m down my I’m kind of. [31:24] Planning for that eventuality so so again I think that in 2018 that. You know that they are going to essentially do a lot more with Last Mile and effectively compete with FedEx and UPS certainly for their own packages and maybe for others. [31:41] Number for TSO on this one we haven’t talked about Walmart in the prediction so I wanted to throw something in there for them I think I think Mark Lori is not done and I think they’ve done a lot there and I think she is just. Starting to get swinging and you know I think the Walmart Wall Street likes this kind of really aggressive posture that they’ve adopted and I think that gives them a lot of flexibility so as I think will win what’s next on is. Play I think they do a big m&a and you know part of me you would know better than that. Groceries in wrestling I don’t think they buy another grocery store though so I can’t think what would it look like like Trader Joe’s or something. Yeah so. You know now that Target is bought shipped I could see Walmart taken out instacart or Postmates and then eBay is still kind of out there and I think. Would be very powerful as a Marketplace partner for Walmart so I kind of put them in that bucket as well. Jason: [32:51] Cool cool. Scot: [32:52] Then any comments on them. Jason: [32:56] No I mean I feel like they’ve been rewarded for all the Acquisitions that they made in the last 18 months are there probably in Bolton so I would certainly be surprised, Ted not see some acquisition activity in in. 2018 your your prediction seem to be around capability and infrastructure which could totally be a lot of their Acquisitions that’s far have been. Actual Brands and so it’ll, it just that out that’ll be interesting to see how that you know where where the focus is in 2018 and I suspect it could be opportunistic as much as strategic in terms of who’s available at the right price. Scot: [33:36] Yeah it kind of ties back to last year’s Casper thing. You know that’s a nice scaled-up brand that once it starts down diepio path you have kind of this one time shot to go buy them I think that’s probably why she got taken out I think they were kind of, Abdul pathan when you start filing for an IPO and having m&a talks so that could not throw that one in there to Casper could be a candidate. My V prediction here is and I’m kind of getting into your world a little bit just cuz I wanted to see your reaction or anything. Platform guy but you know the one platform that seems kind of out there alone is Magento so they were part of eBay they spun out that private Equity that means the Tock the clock is ticking, it’s a great platform I think that they kind of do this tool path that they start down the going public and then they probably get acquired, I’m not sure who acquires them seems like maybe a lot of the. Cloud guide a lot of big guys have their Cloud solution nailed at this point. Maybe Oracle maybe sap maybe IBM. And so now you have more insight into the to the possible choir is it still learn to be less specific I’m not going to be specific on a choir so I think so kind of gets added into a larger Cloud offering. Jason: [35:01] Interesting yeah so it’s it was a weird year in platforms as far as I’m concerned like for a long time, you got a lot of retailers that had no platform and said you know every year a bunch of retailers were buying a platform to start selling direct to sell digital am so you had to want a platform sales every year or you had a bunch of retailers it invested early and we’re in some outdated platform and so there you know every every like 3 to 5 years retailers were rhe platforming as the technology got dramatically better, and so you ended up with these three huge Enterprises sap IBM in Oracle. That were you know making a fortune on all these reply for meetings you had demandware now I’m by Salesforce to the big cloud one. For long-time Magento dominated the long tail and then you know more recently Shopify sort of a cloud SAS version of. Avalon tail has his emerged in course there’s a lot of other platforms but was weird that 2017 is. No the Enterprise ones did particularly well I feel like the pace of RI platforming dramatically slowed down. You’re hard-pressed to find someone that doesn’t already have a platform so there’s less new customers entering the market so it’s more replat forming and it feels like people. Sort of the come to the realization that you don’t dramatically get better customer experiences just by replat for me and so it seems like a lot more people just invested in. New tools are new plugins or new customer experiences for their existing platforms rather than reply for me. [36:35] And I feel like that was an economic challenge for all these big companies that were used to. A lot of expense every platforming happening every year and then you add insult to injury. They’re able to charge a lot more or are certainly recognize a lot more revenue for selling a big expensive on Primm. Perpetual software license then they are for selling s a service and so I think, all the big guys had this double whammy of the economic model shifted that wasn’t favorable in terms of a gaap reporting in the customer slow down and so that you might find in a way that puts those, does kind of Legacy guys that might have snapped at Magento for their customer base in the less of a acquisition posture so, I would personally be a little surprised if one of those big 3 Snapchat Magento Magento still is an interesting asset and that they have tons of users, in some ways there are more modern platform and something a lot of the other ones we talked about because they have kind of free architected more recently. [37:39] There, there may be a step closer to cloud and some of these other guys but they’re not pure Cloud their step closer to microservices but they’re not pure microservices so, there I don’t know if they’re there an interesting I said they’ve got a bunch of users there maybe a half-step more modern and then so you know could could someone want to accelerate their own plan by by acquiring what Magento has, you you could totally see it but it definitely isn’t a slam dunk. Scot: [38:11] And then assess my main 5 and then my bonus at this is really because I want it to be true, and I know Jeff Bezos listen to the show so I have airpods which I really like but the Siri on them really stinks so what I want is Amazon to come out with Alexa powered wireless earbuds kind of an airpod competitor but with Alexa because I just want to sit there and have a conversation with Alexa what while I have little white things in my ears or whatever color the potty black or something so so my prediction is that Amazon will come out with that in 2018 and I have my fingers and toes crossed. Jason: [38:51] I like it the other way that can happen is Amazon and apple could just merge I don’t think either could acquire each other. So so they could just merge and then they could put they could replace Siri with Alexa and then the airpods what’s your point of great Hardware could just have Alexa in the world would be a happy place. Scot: [39:10] My prediction is more likely than yours but I encourage you to make your prediction in your section. Jason: [39:16] No no no no I’m leaving that one firmly in your section alright, well let’s run down my 5 so we we talk a little bit about grocery it was a prediction that they would wake up to digital last year I think this is the year that they totally get disrupted by digital and I think the thing that’s going to, mainly drive that is curbside pickup, so I actually think the digital grocery revenue is going to double in 2018 / 2017 we’re going to see a bunch of retards, roll out a lot more capability to take digital orders for grocery. And I think some of these delivery services could be the odd man out a lot of people have invested in building is delivery services like instacart. And I actually think if if we see huge momentum for curbside pickup that we could see you know at least one of those delivery services get too stressed and have to do some kind of. Disadvantaged transaction and that that that could include instacart as far as I’m concerned. [40:22] So that’s my first prediction is a lot more of us will be shopping for groceries digitally in 2018. Scot: [40:30] You think curbside not not full on delivery. Jason: [40:33] Yeah I mean I think there’s some rich rich neighborhoods that are highly dense that the delivery will make a lot of sense. And you know that might disproportionately be people that listen to the show but I think for the average American it’s going to be picking up your groceries on your way home from soccer practice. I think that’s a. Winning experience it’s 1% of sales in the US at 6% of sales in the UK it’s like 12% of sales in South Korea. I think the early Pilots of all been so successful in the US that we’re just going to see sea rabbit adoption which by the way is going to mean that the retailers like Kroger and Walmart are going to report. Much higher than industry average e-commerce sales in 28 growth in 2018 because they’re there the guys that are going to most benefit from. From this grocery disruption I think an Amazon’s case it means we’re going to see Amazon roll out some kind of national capability for curbside pickup whether that means leveraging Whole Foods are building more of the. Amazonfresh pickup locations or acquiring some other other business. Opportunistic Lee that’s you know distressed in that the Amazon can get a really good deal on to give them more of these pick up Depot location. Scot: [41:55] Cool what’s number two. Jason: [41:56] Number 2 is a after grocery gets disrupted Pharmacy / prescription drugs are going to get disrupted by digital in in 2018. So we we’ve seen some some early moves from Amazon that they might be getting into medical equipment. And it wouldn’t surprise me of Amazon is the big drug disrupter in 2018 I know you predicted that they wouldn’t do a retail acquisition in 2018. Well I kind of agree that they’re probably not strategically looking to acquire another big retailer I think I prefer Amazon has a lot of cash in there totally opportunistic so if the right deal fell into their laps I think they would do it. And I actually think digital could so distressed the drug business that the drug retailers become. A very economical acquisition or we can see some of the drug guys move out of the retail business and into the the insurance business more and then just want to spin off the retail and sell it cheap. Here’s the thing to know about drug 60% of all their sales are traffic that came in to fill a prescription so if consumers start for filling their prescriptions VIA mail at home. Or ordering stuff online and having it delivered to home then those retail stores don’t work if there’s not enough traffic in there to dry them. They’re they’re not price competitive they tend to sell stuff at full pop retail and there’s too many of them so you add all that up and it would not take a huge amount of digital success to totally disrupt the drug business. [43:37] And then you got the fact that the scariest business retailer in the world Amazon is is looking pretty carefully at the space. And I think one way or another it’s a safe bet that drug gets heavily disrupted in 28. Scot: [43:48] Go to could help me with my 9000 stores I need. Jason: [43:51] Yeah absolutely and I I mean I also think just the changes in the insurance. Industries in the US in the government Healthcare and all those other things are are potentially favorable consumers are learning that you have to shop for prices on your prescription meds just like you do. You know any any other consumer expense and I think that that’s going to further open the door for that stuff so I hopefully it does help you out. [44:16] So my third prediction is that the. What I’m calling the the machine winning Gap is going to be the biggest trend for 2018 so you already said in a pretty last year that all the vendors would Embrace machine learning in a big way I think that totally happened. I mentioned I didn’t think a lot of retailers that necessarily. Fully Embrace machine learning and in 2017 I think they’re only a few examples. In 2018 I think we’re going to see some retailers dramatically Embrace machine learning. And we’re going to see a bunch of other retailers not embrace it does not have the resources or just you know be superficial and you know pay lip service or buy some. Some small product that leverages it and so I think we’re going to see a big gap I think we’re going to see some retailers that are really good at machine learning and have. Have them built it into their culture and a breaking down all those data silos and they’re just looking for every opportunity to train a logarithm is with all this customer data and use it to. Deliver way better customer experiences and we’re going to see a bunch of other retailers that either don’t do anything or a very superficial and I think we’re going to see a big gap and customer experiences between those two camps. I think you know obviously the the folks in Embrace machine learning we are going to be well positioned for the future in the sweater or doctors are going to get left behind. [45:39] I don’t know how will measure that exactly so number for, is voice I get asked that voice all the time that speak about natural language processing in boys Commerce I’m actually think 2018 is going to be a huge year for voice, I go to CES this weekend I’m expecting we’re going to see you way more, voice interfaces than ever before and I do think there’s going to be a lot more adoption of them in 2018 then there has been so far which I think 2017 was a big year but I actually don’t think. A very big use case for all of these voice interfaces is going to be Commerce so my my prediction is, voice continues to be a big deal for for interfaces for home automation for stuff like that but that it’s not going to be a big. Use case for ordering products and the one exception to that is going to be the sort of Auto replenishment and using. Using voice to add things to your auto replenishment list and kind of pause your list and modified and do those kind of think so I think with the exception of that one category where your. You’re adjusting your consumable orders I think voices overhyped for Commerce is that a Debbie Downer for you. Scot: [46:59] You’re such a voice guy I’m so processing it I’m in shock. Jason: [47:03] I do like the sound of my own voice that is true. [47:07] My fist it wouldn’t be a Jason and Scott prediction show if I didn’t talk about payments. [47:17] So there’s a big Trend towards every retailer launching their own digital wallets Target is launching a digital while at right now in my big prediction is none of these retail brand of digital wallets are going to work. I think there’s only room in the world the North American market for three digital wallets I think that’s going to be Starbucks Walmart Amazon so I don’t think other retailers are are going down the right path by, by trying to implement that, and I would heavily advised folks to 2 or I wouldn’t advise anyone now that I think about it but I think big point is going to take this year so I know there’s been a lot of Buzz and hide about Bitcoin, super optimistic about blockchain and cyber cyber currencies in general but I just I don’t think Bitcoins going to be. The viable currency to to emerge out of all this. Scot: [48:09] The okay so does that include blockchain and other coins or are just pick one. Jason: [48:17] So I don’t think we’re going to see a legal currency. That the Cyber currency in 2018 I think we’re going to see blockchain becoming a super important technology for, storing value for for Franklin sharing a lot of data and doing interesting things and a lot of Industry so I I certainly think blockchain is a super important and valuable, technology but I don’t think we’re going to see you, a branded currency emerge as a meaningful competitor to $2 and in 2018, and I think the coin is going to be considerably less valuable on December 31st then it was December 31st of this year. Scot: [49:00] It’s too bad you didn’t make that prediction last year. Jason: [49:03] Yep. Scot: [49:04] That’s a good on Jack tonight we had many listeners ask for a deep dive on crypto and blockchain, that is on our list for 2018 so we plan on doing a deep dive on that just so I do think and do some Sherby agree I think it’s important for folks in retail and e-commerce to have a pretty, be a basic understanding of this technology and especially the blockchain cuz I think it’s going to be one of those things that there is reality there and it survives the hype and is pretty interesting, track. Jason: [49:38] Totally I’m looking forward to that jump, and then I did also do a bonus and I arguably we have the same bonus prediction so I tried not to overlap with you on any of the, irregular predictions but I’m I feel like I’m comfortable space on the bonus I wisely decided to make my version slightly broader than yours so I have a better chance of being right, I think we see Amazon watch some kind of wearable in 2018 and so the earbuds is a, total good guess but some other kind of wearable speaker like I think some way to take the the, Alexa technology with you is is something that Amazon’s going to figure out how to offer in 2018. Scot: [50:28] Cool I hope you’re right and I hope it’s your butts. Jason: [50:31] Yeah we should have to see that is the beauty TuneIn the episode 211. [50:40] Scot that is all the time we allotted for tonight show or trying to get the shows a little shorter in 2018 so I predict were only moderately successful. But I super appreciate everyone listening we will put all these predictions in the show notes so that they’re there memorialized and you can make fun of acid their dramatically wrong at the end of 2018. If you have any thoughts about any of these predictions well for you to jump on Facebook and share your thoughts and if you enjoy their our show and enjoy this episode we certainly appreciate that five star review. On iTunes. Scot: [51:18] Thanks everyone for joining us have a great 2018. Jason: [51:22] And until next time happy commercing.